Two Psy, each damaged in different ways. Ill-fated lovers. An emotionally repressed virgin hero who moves the earth for his true love. And all the feels. The feels! This one is definitely a keeper.
Before we start, let’s get this out of the way: I’m not going to tell you explicitly who the Ghost is in this review, but it might be guessable. Also, we don’t have a spoiler filter in the comments, so if you haven’t read the book, I’d suggest avoiding the comments until you do.
If there’s any criticism I could level at the last few Psy-Changeling books, it would be that the romances tended to be overshadowed by the worldbuilding. It’s clear that New Zealand author* Nalini Singh has been building up to some big revelations, and many of them culminate in Heart Of Obsidian.
* In true Aussie fashion, I propose claiming her for our own. It’s a long-standing tradition. We have precendents—the pavlova, Phar Lap, Keith Urban. And now Nalini Singh. Let’s start the rumour today and make it happen.
Kaleb Krychek has always been billed as the ruthless Councillor who has had no compunction in assassinating those who stand in his way, but as the series progressed it’s clear that he has his own agenda, which might not align with my first impression of him. (Jane at Dear Author posted this awesome cheat sheet on what we know of Kaleb up to Kiss of Snow.) After seven years, two week and two days, Kaleb has finally found the woman he has been searching for.
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The crack is back. This book will either allow you to exit the BDB world satisfied…or suck you right back in with a vengeance.
Click here for a round-up of all BDB-related posts on Book Thingo.
This is the book that most Black Dagger Brotherhood fans have been eagerly anticipating ever since the Butch/V bromance turned out to be strictly platonic (if you ignore the occasional voyeurism and ambiguous moments of male bonding). I’m going to try and do this with as few spoilers are possible, but I can’t guarantee not to let details slip, so consider yourself warned.
Blaylock and Qhuinn have been best of friends even before they transitioned (the BDB vampire equivalent of puberty), but between Qhuinn’s indiscriminate and rampant sexcapades, and Blaylock’s homosexuality and unrequited love for his best mate, it’s really all they can do to be in the same room without descending into the sort of delicious angst that has made this series so addictive. Bad timing and some ill-chosen words have led them to believe that their more-than-friends feelings will never be returned by the other.
Qhuinn and Layla are expecting a baby, and Blay is in a committed relationship with Saxton, but they’re all living in the Brotherhood mansion, and they keep running into each other. At the gym. Half naked. With bulging biceps. And rampant and spontaneous erections. (People prone to stiffies shouldn’t really be going commando.) As you do. In one of my favourite scenes—because, come on, how cracktastic is this?—Blay finds the Room of Requirement and indulges his wanksting in a spectacular way. (This is what happens when boys don’t go through puberty in the usual way.)
Blay is probably one of the most well-adjusted BDB characters, so it’s Qhuinn who has to undergo a big emotional journey in this book. In typical BDB fashion, he is filled with self-loathing, mostly over things over which he has no control. Qhuinn’s issues stem from his family’s rejection of him, to the point where his brother was involved in bashing him up almost to death. His desire for a traditional family, to be a father, and his inability to reconcile this dream with a possible relationship with Blay is the biggest hurdle in their relationship.
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An exciting, fast-paced and very, very sexy steampunk romance series.
I am now hooked on a new series, the Clockwork Agents by Kate Cross, and I’m cheating a bit and doing a two-in-one review, largely because what I liked in both books was the same. (I blame Mirna of Rendezvous books for another excellent recommendation.)
This steampunk series is set in Victorian England and is filled with interesting inventions, gadgets and robotics—Cross does a good job of integrating corsets, guns and gadgets. I especially liked the world building and the combination of steampunk and spy vs spy plot. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely historically accurate—they say fuck and shite!—but as this is a steampunk novel, I expected the authors to take some liberties.
Heart of Brass features Lady Arden Grey, whose husband Luke disappears on a mission for the Wardens of the Realm, a covert organisation created to protect the British Empire. Seven years later, an assassin is sent to kill her in retribution for her killing of a Company agent (their rival spy organisation) and she recognizes him as her husband, who has no memory of who she is or any of his past. Arden is a strong, very resourceful heroine, who never lost faith in her husband, Luke, who starts off being a bit of a prick before he gets his memory back.
There’s also a side plot with Arden helping out Scotland Yard in investigations using her special gadgets—she’s an inventor—and solving a mystery as to who is murdering young girls. I don’t think this side plot was necessary, though, and in some ways it detracted from the main story of Arden and Luke figuring out who brainwashed him and trying to help him get back his memories. That story was meaty enough to not need a distraction. There are also a few things I found a bit convenient—like how they have a master surgeon who has a magic elixir that can fix everything, but we don’t know what it is. I hope that’s explained when she gets her own novel.
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A book to hand someone with the words, ‘Please enjoy’—something you can have fun with without having to think too much.
Ethan Wate was born and raised in the southern USA town of Gatlin, where people are very proud of their confederate history and nothing every changes. He longs to escape Gatlin and start a new life—until he meets Lena Duchannes. Lena has just moved back into town after living with her grandmother for many years. She is mysterious, beautiful and there’s something about her he can’t quite pinpoint. She’s also not like the rest of the bubble gum cheerleader crowd, which makes her an automatic candidate for outcast-dom. Ethan is drawn to Lena for reasons he can’t explain, and they fall in love—against strange supernatural odds.
I originally picked up this book because I found out it will be made into a movie with Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson. I then proceeded to read the entire series in about five days—I was so sucked in and captivated by the story I just had to know what happened next. The plot is fast paced, full of twists and way more interesting than Twilight. (There. I said it.) Lena is not a wimp, and although, in the second book ,she goes into a bit of a sad bitch mode reminiscent of New Moon—I stopped after that book, just so you know—she gets over it, moves on, and gets her shit back together. (Take that, Bella.)
But let’s get back to this book.
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One of my favourite books from 2012. And no, I’m not killing any fairies.
Karou is a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague, leading a double life. She runs errands for Brimstone, a monster-like creature who collects teeth in his store in the Elsewhere, half in this world, half in the other. She has no idea how she came to be leading this life full of secrets, but that’s changes when her life is interrupted by someone attempting to close the doors to Elsewhere and she must find out what is going on, who she is, and what that means to her.
Every wonderful thing you’ve read in a review about this book is true, I promise. I fell in love with the lyrical prose, the well-crafted world building and the creative wordcraft and characters. Like every teenager, Karou feels like both in place and different to others at the same time. There are things about herself that she doesn’t understand, like she’s trying to grow into herself and figure out who she really is.
The difference from your typical teenage novel and this one is, of course, that Karou was raised by monsters and goes around the world collecting teeth for reasons she is never told. She seems to like her life, despite the secrecy, until one day the door to Elsewhere is attacked by … angels. One in particular, who can’t bring himself to kill her.
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A fast-paced, well-written urban fantasy with a flawed but charming heroine. There isn’t much romance in this book, but if you like a lot of action and aren’t put off by a high body count—usually by decapitation—then it’s a promising start to a new series.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
First, a heads-up: this isn’t a romance. There aren’t even really any romantic elements, although there may be hints of it for the overarching series. Escape Publishing markets itself as a romance imprint, so I’m assuming that Chaos Born is one of those genre-bending stories and that the romance will eventually pick up in subsequent books.
With that out of the way, I’ll admit that I haven’t read much urban fantasy of late, so I’m not the best judge of what’s merely derivative and what’s fresh. All I know is that I couldn’t put this book down.
Lora Blackgoat is a smuggler and mercenary for whom things haven’t been going all that well. Her last job—an exorcism—went bad, and it’s all she can do to get a decent job these days. Plus, she’s wanted by a loanshark and a thug who wants to avenge his brother’s death. When an old friend asks her to look into some suspicious deaths, Lora ends up in it up to her neck in trouble (not that she’s ever really out of it). Worse, her questions seem to be leading her to the Order of Guides, a kind of magic police force that regulates the use of magic, specifically the darker kind.
What interested me most about Chaos Born is how author Rebekah Turner constructs her protagonist—an unapologetically flawed heroine who gambles, drinks, fights and swears with the best of them. Lora isn’t your typical urban fantasy bombshell heroine.
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Erotic romance readers who are weary of porny positions and situations may find this book a refreshing change. I just wish there had been more space for the world and the romance to develop.
This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Lissa, Princess of Horvald, fall in love with her slave, Devadas, who apparently perishes in battle. Ten years later, she learns that not only did he survive, he has come back to conquer Horvald and take revenge on the princess who abandoned him to the whims of war.
This story really needed to be longer or to have started at a different place. There just isn’t enough space in a novella to show how Lissa and Devadas move from master/slave to lovers, then to conqueror/slave to equal partners, while also dealing with secondary characters and antagonists. I think I would have preferred to start at the point where Devadas returns to take his revenge and have the backstory fed to me in bits and pieces.
Author Keziah Hill builds an intriguing world—although warring kingdoms are fairly common both in historical and fantasy romance, Lissa and Devadas also come from very different cultures whose views on sexuality are almost at extreme ends of the spectrum. As well as providing much fodder for sexier scenes—and this book is pretty hot without going over the top—Hill touches on the way in which women have power in both types of communities.
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Neither whimsical nor brilliant. The best I can say about this book is that I was compelled to skim it to the end.
In hindsight, when the the book’s introduction, ‘A Note From Alice’, failed to stir any reaction from me other than, Seriously?, I should have left it at that. But I wanted to give the book a fair go, because look at that cover and think of the possibilities of a zombiefied version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
But any link to Lewis Carroll’s original text is tenuous at best. I wouldn’t have cared if the title were a tongue-in-cheek reference to Carroll’s Alice and that was it, but the entire book seems geared towards exploiting this link: the title, the cover image, the tagline ‘Off with their heads!’, and the series name, The White Rabbit Chronicles. If you’re looking for the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Alice Bell’s life changes the night she loses her family to a car accident in which she also witnesses her father being devoured by monsters. In hospital she befriends Kat, the embodiment of your typical tough and sarcastic best friend with a marshmallow centre in a teen novel. When Alice begins junior year (Is that the equivalent of year 11? I always forget) at a new high school, it’s fairly predictable that she finds Kat in the same school.
Anyway, it turns out that Kat’s ex-boyfriend—who you just know won’t be ex-ish for long—hangs out with a group of scary boys and girls, one of whom is Cole. The minute he and Alice make eye contact, Alice has staggeringly realistic visions of them together. Mostly they’re what would pass as wet dreams in a teen novel, but occasionally there’s a spot of portentous violence, too.
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A book for people who enjoy fairy tale retellings with a twist.
Sunday is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. In a large family she is much overlooked, and she spends her time writing stories, which have a tendency to come true. Sunday can only write about the past, because she’s afraid of what may come true if she writes about the future.
She meets an enchanted frog in the wood behind her house and begins to share her stories with him. She and the frog become fast friends, and one night, when she kisses him goodbye, he turns back into a man. Except he’s really the prince of the kingdom, and when she meets him, she doesn’t know who he is. How will he ever get her to fall in love again?
This story is more than it seems. Alethea Kontis builds a world where every fairy tale you’ve ever heard of exists and has been integrated to the story in such a way that even the characters themselves know about it. (Oh, it’s a talking frog. It must be enchanted. Or remember that girl who pricked herself on a needle? Well actually…) If it were not for the richness of the language and the way the stories are told by Sunday, the narrator, you could almost feel like you were gossiping with the neighbours about the girl down the road who got pricked by the spindle. I quite enjoyed Kontis’s fresh spin on fairy tales, where everyone is aware of what might happen and takes care to make sure it doesn’t…although that doesn’t always work either.
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A novelette that contains some of the most fascinating themes I have ever read in a romance, let alone an erotic specfic, and leaves behind a strong and inspiring sentiment.
I am receptive to just about any story—it doesn’t matter what it’s about, or how morally ambiguous or taboo it is, it’s all in how it’s written and presented. The Watchmaker’s Lady certainly makes for unconventional reading, challenging the traditional notions of a romantic story, as it involves a deeply loving and sexual relationship between a man and a doll.
That’s right, a doll.
The exploration and exploitation of the fetish isn’t exactly new in fiction, but it’s arguably a daring premise in the romance genre. I’ve put it quite crudely just now, but don’t go pulling repulsed faces yet. The Watchmaker’s Lady does have a man and a female automaton having sex—lots and lots of sex—but this is no typical fetish story. Author Heather Massey assures us that ‘if you dig a little deeper beneath the kink you’ll discover a heart-warming romance between two soul mates’.
And so it is, but it does take some digging.
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