Photo: Blood by xTrish (via Flickr)

Warning: Not for the squeamish. (And I haven’t had this much fun with euphemisms ever.)

I love a good vampire romance as much as the next Twilight fan, and I love it when authors force their ethical vampire heroes to fall in lust with human heroines. It’s a heady thrill to read about the excruciating dilemma of a vegetarian vampire, a conscientious objector when it comes to live blood sport, whose instincts throb in the presence of his One True Love and her pulsating arteries.

It’s why we let Edward get away with stalking bloody Bella. Because he’s conflicted! And hungry! And noble! And sparkly!

Wait, what?

But seriously. There’s a question that has never been addressed to my satisfaction by any paranormal romance or urban fantasy book I’ve read:

What happens every month when Aunt Flo is visiting, when all is not quiet on the waterfront, when the heroine is trolling for vampires?

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Twilight: The Graphic Novel (Volume 1) by Stephenie Meyer and Young Kim (Twilight Saga)

Twilight lends itself to the shoujo manga format much better than in prose or in film. Young Kim’s renditions of the characters are disarmingly gorgeous, but even they can’t redeem Stephenie Meyer’s story of destructive co-dependency. And then there’s the font.

Jen, graphic designer extraordinaire and pop culture aficionado, generously agreed to do a guest review of this graphic novel. You can read more of her writing at Evening Hour.

Ah, Twilight, the stuff that dreams are made on. It’s not every day that one book, whose very premise was born out of a dream—so its creator, Stephenie Meyer, says—can reduce the time-honoured traits of popular culture’s great vampires to glittering giftwrap in the sunlight. When Kat offered the comic for me to review, who was I to refuse the chance to return to all the loltastic awfulness that encompasses Twilight?

These days, comic book adaptations serve as extended editions in a sea of franchise fodder. Often poor and hurried productions, they’re an easy marketing tactic to gain revenue on the side and to appease the voracious and loyal consumer. For the disinclined readers among us, comics can be a great alternative to absorb a self-contained story without sifting through the boring bits, like watching the film version in one sitting.

Unfortunately, no fast-food serving of Twilight could possibly make me hungry for more.

Yet, despite the frequent jibes I make at the popular YA book, this first volume of the graphic novel is mostly successful. 

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Children of Scarabaeus (Scarabaeus, Book 2)

Not quite as compelling as the first book and the romance is underdeveloped, but still a satisfying conclusion to the Scarabaeus duology.

When Edie is recaptured by the Crib, she discovers they’ve been grooming four Talasi children to become cyphertecks for her former mentor’s pet project, Project Ardra. Edie is torn between her freedom, her obligation to free Finn, her desire to save the children, and as she learns the motives behind Project Ardra, to find a way of preventing colonised planets turning into uninhabitable mush.

This book is a continuation of the events in Song of Scarabaeus, and it’s best to read the books in order. Unlike its predecessor, Children of Scarabaeus relies on a series of smaller arcs and plots to keep the momentum going. The pacing isn’t as strong, nor are the conflicts as compelling. There are a lot of antagonists, and they’re not all well developed enough to be interesting.

There’s a bit of deus ex machina in the resolution, which is disappointing given that, for the most part, it wasn’t easy to predict how the story would go. The world building in this book also becomes mired in twists and complications.

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Heart of Steel by Meljean Brook (Iron Seas, Book 2)

It’s rare in romance to find an uncompromisingly strong heroine and even rarer to find a hero who understands how to love such a woman. This book gets it just right.

Although Meljean Brook is one of my autobuy authors, I was hugely disappointed by her first Iron Seas novel, The Iron Duke. I found Rhys Trahaearn unheroic, rapish and generally irritating. I hadn’t planned to read any more of this series, except I forgot to tell the bookshop, and they put aside a copy of Heart of Steel for me.

This is fortunate, because Heart of Steel is everything I love about Brook’s writing. Adventurer Archimedes Fox and Captain Yasmeen, who appeared in the first book, remind me of Hugh and Lilith from Brook’s The Guardians series. Their romance is cheeky but filled with subtext and things left unsaid that make it just that much more thrilling.

Archimedes Fox is presumed dead and Yasmeen makes a bargain with his sister to sell off a valuable Da Vinci sketch in exchange for a portion of the proceeds. But there are complications. Word seems to have got out, and some people are not above a bit of murder to get their hands on it. The sketch is stolen. Oh, and Fox isn’t actually dead.

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How Now Brown Frau by Merridy Eastman

If you like funny, heartfelt memoirs, this one is for you. Meredith Eastman seems to have lived out her dream—successful career, great guy and a lovely family—and it’s always lovely to see that come true for someone.

At 41, Merridy Eastman had accepted that she would be single (and happy) for the rest of her life. Then she meets a lovely German while visiting Europe. A year later—also preggers—she moves to Bavaria to be with him and start a new life together. This is the story of her adventure.

I have to admit this book caught my eye based on the title alone. In real life I say ‘How now brown cow?’ to people instead of ‘What’s up?’ sometimes, a legacy of my school days when they had Hershey’s Brown Cow commercials. I read the back blurb and the first chapter and, always a sucker for funny travel memoirs, I got it.

Eastman, a former Play School presenter, writes a comedic, sometimes bittersweet tale of what it’s like to uproot yourself to a new country, learn a new language and fall in love with the country and its people, even if you can’t understand what they’re saying.

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Triptych by Krissy Kneen

This anthology is not for readers with a weak stomach for pushing sexual boundaries in fiction. The stories are challenging and absurd, the relationships unconventional, almost as if the author is daring us to keep reading.

This is a very strange book. I loved Australian author Krissy Kneen’s memoir, Affection, and after hearing her read excerpts from her new book, Triptych, I felt prepared for the confronting sexual situations I was about to encounter. And yet at the end of it all, I just felt…dissatisfied.

Triptych is a collection of three novellas inspired by works of art. The three stories are linked, but each looks at different types of sexual expression.

In ‘Susanna’, inspired by the painting Susanna and the Elders by Gentileschi, a woman googles her ex-lover and discovers the world of ChatRoulette. Susanna, also the protagonist’s name, finds comfort and sexual excitement in this world, and begins to suspect that her online lover lives in her building.

This story starts off beautifully and has, depending on your sense of humour, a spectacularly funny end. Susanna’s attempts to discover her lover’s real identity are alternately sweet, funny and more than a little creepy. It’s not your conventional romance, but I found it quite romantic in a mad kind of way.

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Untameable Rogue by Kelly Hunter (The Bennetts, Book 4)

If you can overlook the daggy warrior references and underutilised Asian setting, there’s enough depth in the central relationship to make this book a pleasure to read. If you enjoy the daggy stuff…well, that just makes it even better.

This was my first Kelly Hunter book, but it won’t be my last. I don’t care what anyone says about the super daggy Karate Kid-style set up at the beginning of the novel, or the constant references to Chinese zodiac signs (I am the warrior tiger, hear me roar!), this book was thrilling!

From the outside, Madeline Delacourte seems a bit…suss. Her late husband plucks a much younger wife off the streets of Jakarta, and she later inherits and now runs his multi-million-dollar business. But like all Mills and Boon trophy wives, Maddy has a heart of gold. She rescues stray kids from the streets and brings them to her friend Jacob’s dojo to become his apprentice.

As she drops off her latest street kid, she meets Jacob’s brother Luke, who’s in between missions. Luke is a bomb disposal expert and he’s quick to judge Maddy, who doesn’t rise to the bait because, frankly, she’s heard it all before.

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Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (Scarabaeus, Book 1)

A page turner for science fiction readers who like a bit of romance, not the other way around.

Edie is desperate to escape her life of service to the Crib empire, so when she’s kidnapped by mercenaries and forced to cooperate with their plans, she’s worried but not exactly anxious to get back to the Crib.

But when she’s leashed to Finn, an ex-slave who turns out to belong to a group of highly trained fighters, she’s given no choice. If she ventures too far—for example, in an attempt to escape her new masters—Finn dies. If Edie refuses to help the mercenaries, they’ll both be killed.

Edie is a cypherteck, and her job for the Crib was to help seed newly discovered planets in order to make them viable for human occupation. After the planet is occupied, the Crib charge its inhabitants to keep the seeds viable. The mercenaries want her to extract keystones from existing planet seeds, which are then sold to Fringe planets so they can be free of the Crib’s control.

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New York to Dallas by J. D. Robb (In Death, Book 33)

The plot brings nothing new to crime fiction. Nevertheless, this is a reasonably good thriller that should allow In Death series fans to finally get some closure on Eve Dallas’s traumatic past.

I almost didn’t finish this book. In fact, it was almost DNF before it even really began. I’ve read the first few J. D. Robb novels, and I read Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta series until the plot and characters went a bit WTF. So I’m not a stranger to crime fiction and the serial criminals that authors like to foist on readers.

But, for some reason, the beginning of New York to Dallas had my tummy churning. Serial child rapist Isaac McQueen was Eve Dallas’s first major arrest, and now he’s escaped prison. He’s determined to make Eve pay for putting him in prison, and forces her to return to Dallas.

Readers of the series will know that Dallas is where, as a child, Eve finally escaped from her abusive father by stabbing him as he tried to rape her. Eve thinks she’s dealt with her past, but we—and husband Roarke—know this isn’t entirely true.

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Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush Saga, Book 1)

A bodice-ripper for the Twilight generation. If you look beyond its uncomfortably age inappropriate start, you’ll find unwanted but undeniable chemistry, highly realistic teenage logic and page-turning mystery.

Hush, Hush is a really interesting book to review. Its plot is reminiscent of a 1970s bodice-ripper where the older, more experienced hero antagonises the virginal young heroine as much as he tempts her. Becca Fitzpatrick doesn’t let a lack of sex (this is teen fiction, after all) prevent her from having Patch Cipriano forcefully seduce Nora Grey at every opportunity. They each have other potential love interests who make the other party jealous, but the once-intimidating hero actually becomes the safer option and they are forced to team up to survive.

Rape-tacular biology in motion

There are aspects of the book that don’t present well despite Fitzpatrick’s best intentions, and I’m going to get the crap out of the way first because most of it happens in the first half of the book.

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