Night's Cold Kiss by Tracey O'Hara (Dark Brethren, Book 1)
Our obsession with vampires isn’t over, with a new series hitting the shelves this week. Debut author Tracey O’Hara shows us why we love to be seduced by danger and darkness.
Antoinette Petrescu, haunted by her mother’s murder at the hands of a vampire, makes her living tracking down Necrodreniacs—rogue vampires addicted to the death-high that occurs when they drain, and therefore kill, a human. But when a series of murders forces her to work closely with Christian Laroque, an Aeternus vampire, Antoinette discovers that she has a few things left to learn about vampires—they’re not all vicious murderers, and she’s not as immune to their charms as she’d thought.
Humans and parahumans co-exist in this world under a peace treaty that’s beginning to unravel. Not everyone is interested in peace, and resentment has endured long after the end of a bitter and bloody war between vampires, Animalians and humans. Antoinette and Christian suspect there’s a mole within the Council for Human and Paranormal Relations (CHaPR), leaking information and trying to disrupt the tenuous peace
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Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout
A reluctant Valkyrie, an exiled god, and a warrior who’s been there and done that set out to get in and out of hell and somehow stop the end of the world. (Did I mention there’s a cute doggy?)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, or at least as decreed by Norse Mythology in an event known as Ragnarok. Inevitably it is meant to end with a great battle, and to even up the odds, DNA testing is used to find the perfect warriors. Mist, a Valkyrie recruited using this method, becomes disheartened after a recruitment that goes terribly wrong. She decides that since the world is ending anyway, she should go and find her sister, who has somehow ended up in Hel. To get to Hel she needs to find the god Hermod, who has actually made it there and back. Hermod is currently wandering the streets of LA (with his Alaskan Malamute!) trying to keep his head down after leaving the realm of the gods many, many years ago. Of course, the last thing he wants is to go back to Hel, but somehow he gets sucked in through a series of unusual events.
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Scent of Darkness by Christina Dodd (Darkness Chosen, Book 1)
Once upon a time, Konstantin, a warrior from the Russian steppes, made a deal with the devil. In exchange for a priceless icon that had been in his family for generations (plus his soul, of course), he and his sons—and they only bred sons—would be given a special power enabling them to hunt all their enemies down.
Fast forward to about now. The latest Konstantin escaped his family to build a new life in America. He’s made a prosperous life for himself, and he has 4 children—including a daughter.
One day, his ex-gypsy wife has a vision that tells them how to break the pact and free themselves from their curse. The 4 books in the Darkness Chosen series cover just how they end up doing that.
Scent of Darkness is about Jasha, the eldest son, and his personal assistant, Ann. Ann has a thing for her boss, and one day she goes off to his house, looking hawt, to deliver important papers and try to seduce him. Part 2 of this plan goes rather well, but only after she gets scared out of her wits by discovering his special power: he’s a shapeshifter.
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The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire edited by Trisha Telep
If you’re thinking of reading The Eternal Kiss to wean yourself off a Twilight high, think again. Pitting Twilight against this feast of words and emotions would be like comparing Passion Pop with a full-bodied Shiraz.
The Eternal Kiss is a collection of 13 vampire stories for young adults written by some of the most popular authors in the genre. The stories in this luscious anthology are indeed bound by blood, but it’s the complexity of desire that gives the authors room to flex their skills.
This isn’t a romance anthology, but most of the stories incorporate some flavour of love, lust or both. Desire wars with reason, and the passion of youth is explored—sometimes tenderly, sometimes with violence. The authors offer different points of view—guys and girls, vampires and humans, predator and prey.
Most touch on one’s sense of identity and asks the question, What makes us unique? There’s no common sense of morality, and this is what makes the anthology, as a whole, so compelling.
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Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh (Psy-Changeling Series, Book 1)
Slave to Sensation was one of the first paranormal romances I ever read—could I have asked for a better introduction to the genre? This book has a permanent spot in my keeper shelf and remains my favourite in the Psy-Changeling Series.
Slave to Sensation was the first book I ever bought based purely on online buzz after author Nalini Singh ran a viral marketing campaign through Dear Author. I’ve never regretted my decision, and this series, currently up to its sixth book, is still an auto-buy for me.
Slave to Sensation begins with a chilling prologue that introduces Silence—a process of conditioning Psy children into suppressing all emotion in order to stamp out the growing violence and insanity in the Psy population. Gifted with advanced mental capabilities, the Psy consider themselves perfect in their Silence.
Sascha Duncan has always suspected she’s flawed. Lately, she’s been leaking emotion, and only her ability to mimic Silence protects her from being forced into rehabilitation. When Sascha meets Lucas Hunter, alpha of the DarkRiver changeling pack, to negotiate a historic business deal, his emotional changeling nature batters at her mental shields.
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Courting Disaster by Kathleen O'Reilly (Southern Legacies: The Prestons, Book 6)
A virgin country singer paired with a playboy race car driver hero could’ve been a recipe for disaster, but Kathleen O’Reilly writes some of the best couple dynamics I’ve read in a category romance.
Courting Disaster is the sixth book in the Southern Legacies series, and this is painfully obvious in the first few chapters. The only mildly interesting event in the first 40 pages is a parking accident, which sets up the meeting between playboy race-car driver Demetri Lucas, a close friend of the Prestons, and country-and-western singer Elizabeth Innis, who’s part of the Prestons’ extended family.
Once O’Reilly gets through the series continuity info dump, the book picks up the pace and we’re treated to a romance that’s both somewhat traditional and yet unpredictable.
Old-fashioned romance with modern sensibilities
Elizabeth is a famous singer whose virginal reputation is part of her “brand”, if you will. O’Reilly gives her a back story in which this is plausible if not entirely believable.
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Skin Trade by Laurell K Hamilton (Anita Black, Vampire Hunter, Book 17)
I have some good news and some bad news about Skin Trade, the seventeenth book in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. The good news is there are only 2 properly defined sex scenes in the whole book, and the bad news is there are only 2 properly defined sex scenes in the whole book.
OK, so I’m conflicted about this series, but I keep buying the damn books soon after their release, just not in hardback anymore.
Anita arrives at her office to find a head in a box sent by the vampire Vittorio (the stripper-killer in Incubus Dreams) from Las Vegas and is on a flight there within hours. When she arrives, she finds that her preternatural reputation has preceded her and she is held for several hours, having to justify her powers, humanity, knowledge and skill to the local law enforcement. Given that she is known for living with the Master Vampire of her city and her ties to the shapeshifter community, the cops’ suspiciousness towards her seems reasonable, but it reads like short, pretty little female Anita manfully holding her own in a pissing contest with the big boys, and it slows down the book’s pacing.
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Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh (Psy-Changeling Series, Book 6)
Branded by Fire was one of my most-awaited novels of the year, and it has definitely been worth the wait. The sixth novel in bestselling author Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series is packed with political intrigues, explosions, beloved characters, and a surprisingly strong romance that’s placed firmly at the centre of the story.
Mercy is a DarkRiver sentinel, the frontline defence for her leopard changeling pack. She has an awfully strong itch, and it seems the only one who can scratch it is Riley Kincaid, a lieutenant for the neighbouring wolf pack, SnowRiver. That’s assuming she doesn’t scratch him first. Mercy and Riley are equivalently ranked soldiers in different packs, and neither is used to giving up control.
Alpha vs. alpha
For Mercy, it’s a particularly painful dilemma. As a sentinel, as a dominant female, her chances of mating are slim. She could never be attracted to a weaker male, and yet her leopard nature may never accept a dominant mate. Worse, she’s attracted to the wrong changeling. As in wrong pack. And she’s attracted in a big way. So is he. Also in a big way.
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The Sinful Life of Lucy Burns by Elizabeth Leiknes
I’ll begin this review with a caveat: The Sinful Life of Lucy Burns isn’t the sort of book I’d normally buy without skimming first. But when the publisher emailed me to offer a review copy, I was happy to give it a go. This is the debut novel for author Elizabeth Leiknes, and I wanted to like it, but the story hit too many of my pet peeves and left me feeling like it could have been so much better.
When Lucy Burns was a child, she made a deal “To Whom It May Concern”: save her sister’s life, and Lucy will be forever in their debt. She’s been dealing with the devil ever since. In exchange for fulfilling her material and cosmetic desires, Lucy becomes a Facilitator—someone who lures damned souls into the devil’s pit, which, as it turns out, is accessible from Lucy’s basement. It’s an interesting premise (and it immediately reminded me of Kathleen O’Reilly’s The Diva’s Guide to Selling Your Soul), but Lucy as a character starts to unravel for me early in the story.
Sympathising with the devil’s henchwoman
Leiknes sets Lucy up as a sympathetic character trapped into working for the devil
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Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (True Blood, Book 9)
I have a confession to make: Although I have been a long-term reader of this series, when the books started being released in hardcover first, I lost track of it while waiting for the paperbacks. So when I received a review copy of Dead and Gone, I had to catch up with All Together Dead and From Dead to Worse. Each book brings major changes to Sookie’s world and I find trying to pick up my place in the story without remembering what happened in earlier books disorienting so I wouldn’t recommend reading the books out of order or as stand alones.
This review contains spoilers from earlier books in the series.
Werepanthers and vampires and fairies, oh my!
Dead and Gone is the ninth book in the Sookie Stackhouse (aka True Blood, aka Southern Vampire) series and picks up two and a half months after From Dead to Worse. Sookie is in a relatively strong position, with favours owed by the new King of Louisiana and the local werewolf pack, as well as having her own fairy godmother, not to mention 2 powerful witches as housemates. And then there’s the added advantage of being able to read human minds. The story begins with the Great Reveal—in other words, the Weres are following the vampires’ example and are coming out of the closet to the human world.
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