Review: Storm Born Volume 1

Storm Born Volume 1 by Richelle Mead

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Down & dirty review because I gotta be somewhere in about ten minutes.

Sea Lion Publishing contacted me as they seemed to have done with a lot of people and sent me the first three issues of Storm Born. The collected version will have issues 1-4 so I haven't seen the complete book as of yet.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not a Richelle Mead fan per say. I think she's a good writer, but her books tend to go to dark, angsty, places and I don't like angst in my romance.

However, I have read Storm Born, back when it first came out, and let me tell you, the graphic novelization is way better. I actually couldn't remember if I'd read it or not, but as I started to read the first issue, it all came flooding back. The art is phenomenal, Grant Alter has stripped away a lot of the extraneous detail that bogged the story down, and Eugenie is free to shine as an awesome heroine.

I have to say, I really love the way the sex scenes were handled. You never see masculine or feminine bits, but the hiding of them never seemed contrived. The body language is completely natural and sometimes you could almost see movement on the page.

If the art by Dave Hamann wasn't so fabulous, the writing couldn't carry the book alone, so this is really a perfect pairing. Comparisons should be drawn to Patricia Briggs' Mercedes Thompson books as Mercy and Eugenie are the same type of heroine.

Gotta run, but I rec this and I hope it does well enough for the later books in the series to be covered so I don't have to read them!

Review: Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes by Natalie J. Damschroder

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



So this isn't coming out until Halloween, which is a little over a month away, but Carina Press doesn't have any 'wait until' guidelines over at NetGalley and I'm feeling too lazy to log into Blogger.

I realized when I was almost finished with this book that I tend to think of these books as Carina Press books rather than a Natalie Damschroder book. I figure it's because I've never heard of most of these authors, but then I catch myself trying to compare Behind the Scenes to Falke's Captive. It's apples and oranges, Self, apples and oranges.

Anyways. The book. The heroine is Kennedy, a security specialist who dedicates herself protecting others. She normally sticks to taking jobs from humanitarian organizations because her older brother was killed while working for a Doctors Without Borders-type group. Due to machinations by her father and old family friends, she gets drafted into protecting a movie set. Kennedy doesn't take the threat seriously at first, but soon learns the bad guys are taking it very seriously indeed. She gets entangled with the leading man, Roman, who then becomes a target for the bad guys.

So. Good stuff. Kennedy is the kick-ass, take charge, type of heroine. She may not be in the military, but she is a soldier nonetheless. Her strategy was smart and she was a good leader. The reader gets a very in-depth look at what being in personal security means. The book also moved along at a very fast clip.

Bad stuff. Next to Kennedy's strong presence, Roman paled. Here's this Brad Pitt-esque movie star and he barely registered. In addition, the relationship development got greatly overshadowed by the action. Damschroder makes it a point of saying that Kennedy & Roman are having nightly chats over a long period of time, getting to know each other, but the reader doesn't get to see any of it. I twigged onto the bad guy's identity about halfway through, but Damschroder threw in enough red herrings that I wasn't positively sure until the last quarter of the book.

I don't read a lot of romantic suspense so that could factor into my general meh-ness about Behind the Scenes. I admit, I wanted more of the rich and famous lifestyle & less of the screaming and dodging. If you like romantic suspense, I'd rec you give this a try and you'll probably rate it four stars. Everyone else, go read something by Shannon Stacey or Cindy Spencer Pape.

Review: Falke's Captive

Falke's Captive by Anna Leigh Keaton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I don't know if this really deserves four stars, but it's getting them for two reasons. First of all, Falke's Captive makes sense and I'm still shaking my head over Chaos Tryst. Secondly, you rarely see this kind of plot in shifter romances. There was that brief scene at the end of Shelly Laurenston's Here Kitty, Kitty! and, the beginning of, oh, crap, what was it? Um, The Jaguar Prince, I think. I mean, there are many books where shifters are hunted by scientists and the like, but very few where they are shipped off to the zoo or 'tagged' (I'm excluding Jennifer Ashley's Pride Mates series as the purpose behind those collars don't fit this scenario). I like seeing what realistic situations modern-day shifters could find themselves in and being tranq'd & tagged by a wildlife researcher certainly fits the bill.

I admit to skimming through the sex scenes, not because they were bad, but because there were a lot of them and I was on lunch at work. Reading about anal sex is a little surreal when the co-worker sitting next to you is on the phone, arguing about a bill. It did feel like the sex scenes kinda outnumbered the plot scenes, but that's not exactly unexpected with this type of book. This is also the second book in the series and, despite not having read the first one, I was able to follow along quite nicely. I respect an author who can continue a series without info dumping or ignoring the first book entirely.

I'm starting to get the after-lunch sleepies so it's definitely time for my vitamins. To wrap up, I'd rec this for fans of Crystal Jordan. I'd have priced this at $3.99 instead of $4.99 (don't ask me why, it just doesn't feel like a $5 book and it's only 174 pages. Harlequin Presents are usually another 20+ pages for the same price), but if you can get a coupon somewhere, check it out.

Review: Chaos Tryst

Chaos Tryst by Shirin Dubbin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This seems to be my week for the almost-greats. Y'know what I mean. I'm referring to those books that inch along the tightrope between 'Eh. It was good,' and 'This was awesome,' and they invariably fall off the wire somewhere in between. Chaos Tryst took the plunge closer to the 'Eh' side, which was disappointing.

Ariana (aka Ari) is a returner, a person who retrieves stolen artifacts and returns them to their rightful owners. She's also the daughter of two trickster gods, Anasai and Inari, and she's inherited a large chunk of their chaos magic. Maks's origin is somewhat fuzzier. He's a Bear shifter, the middle of three brothers, and he's the only one who got chaos magic from their mother. Maks makes a big deal out of being half Russian and half Gypsy, but since I'm not really up on Russian or Gypsy mythology, I couldn't really tell you where his parents fall on the the power scale or what Maks really is. Maks's characterization is where the book started to lose its balance. Ari is very clearly defined. She is a tricksy girl who tries to use her powers for good. When she's being tricksy, her kitsune spirit overlays itself on her physical body, but she doesn't actually turn into a fox. Maks literally turns in a bear and the bear seems to have its own consciousness because the bear knows it wants Ari while the man is still reluctant. Maks the man is also sulky as several of characters call him and he is largely inscrutable. You don't really see him fall in love with Ari. He goes from being murderously pissed off to I guess I'll help her out to We shall be wed!. I raised my eyebrows at that.

Furthermore, the world Dubbin has created bears the potential to be fascinating. It's like a cross between the comic book series Fables by Bill Willingham and Wen Spencer's Tinker (I need Spencer to write faster. Like seriously). However, the reader is never given any framework for understanding it. It's like there's a refugee camp crammed full of every mythological being ever created, regardless of ethnic origin, and inhabitants refer to themselves as Faebles. To make things more confusing, the implication is, Ari aside, that the characters' first language is of the country their myth originated from. For example, Inari's dialogue reads like a native Japanese speaker translating her thoughts into English. Maks's dialogue has a Russian flair. So it begs the question: why are they here and not there, and why is English the common-use language?

It sounds nitpicky when I re-read it, but I firmly believe that if an author is going to create an elaborate fantasy world, they need to establish a logical framework within it. When Maks and Ari touch, their chaos magics spiral together and create havoc. Okay, I can buy that, but why? Is it because they are meant to be together? Did their magic ever spring out of control when they were children? Can they manipulate events to kill someone? Is chaos magic only passed down trickster bloodlines? Why did Maks inherit the magic, but not his brothers?

Also, after some chaos incidents, Dubbin throws in a section, '2 minutes prior' or whatever, where the reader is told how the chaos incident happened. I don't understand why this wasn't just part of the story. Why do I need a flashback for this? Why can't it be in the linear narrative?

I can keep asking question after question about various aspects of the story, which is basically my point. A story can have a good foundation and be crappy (see the vast majority of fanfiction), but if the foundation is riddled with cracks, the story is going to collapse within itself.

I'm keeping this at three stars because I would read a sequel. The flaws within Chaos Tryst are definitely fixable so another story set in this world has the potential to be very good, if it can just keep its balance long enough!

Review: Darkest Fire

Darkest Fire by Tawny Taylor

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I'd written a very long, very scathing, review of this book and then I hit one of my bookmark buttons by accident. Bye bye, review. I kinda want to cry now. Bad enough I had to suffer through this book and then I lose my five+ paragraphs on top of it? Heartbreaking.

Here are the highlights:

1. The back blurb is completely misleading. This is not a paranormal. Rin and Drakos do not know each other. Drakos does dom other subs, but he doesn't have intercourse with anyone but Rin. Rin has no big secret. She marries him to rescue her sister, which she pretty much tells him right away.

2. Taylor misrepresents post-traumatic stress disorder. I have PTSD and the symptoms she eventually gives Lei, Rin's sister, are characteristic of depression. Also, Lei is astonishingly psychologically and physically healthy, considering she's been held in sexual captivity for over a year.

3. There are a bajillion plot holes and things that are never explained. I tried to see if there was an ebook prequel of this series, but Taylor's website is out of date and poorly organized. So anytime you ask 'why,' expect to be disappointed.

4. The plot doesn't flow smoothly. There are odd time jumps. The worst one happens towards the end of the book. On page 253, the end of Chapter 21, some characters are in mortal danger. They may not survive. Page 254 begins Chapter 22 and it opens with a sex scene. We don't find out the fate of the characters until page 258 and then we also find out it's 'months later.'

What kills me about all of this is that I think the bones of a good book were there. If Taylor had opened with a prologue, shortened Lei's captivity & read the DSM-IV, and the plot kinks were fixed, this would have been a decent book. I would say the sex scenes were fairly hot, but at that point, I couldn't stop WTF-ing.

So there you go. It all boils down to that: Darkest Fire is an epic WTF book. I won't read the other books in the series when they come out, but I'm not saying I wouldn't read other books by the author. I would just do so with extreme caution and maybe with a spotter.

Review: True Vision

True Vision by Joyce Lamb

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I probably would have given this book three stars up until page 307, where I promptly declared the heroine a bitch. I totally sided with the hero, Noah, and if I'd been him, I wouldn't have come back. The heroine, Charlie, should've had to go to him. And then she's all righteous, "Well, of course, I did that." I wanted to slap her.

Also, what the hell was the deal with her mother? Charlie, at times, wants to protect her despite the fact the woman hit her as a child and STILL DOES. Charlie is also incredibly loyal to her father, who didn't lift a finger to keep his wife away from his daughter. This chick needs serious therapy. It's like watching Stockholm Syndrome in action. In any other book, Charlie would've moved outta town, leaving her past & abusers in the dust, only coming back when forced to.

In addition, there's a bit of a jarring moment on page 158 where a minor character launches into a diatribe about what's wrong with newspapers today. I had to check the copyright date because I seriously thought the book was published in the late nineties. On 9/11/01, you know how I got my news? A Roswell message board because the cable went out and I was forced to beg for news from fellow fans. You know how I get my news now? Twitter and my local paper's iPhone app. And you know what all those things have? Ads. You want to get your message out to people, you better learn how to adapt to technological changes. I would have thought a self-professed billionaire would grasp that little fact.

On the positive side, the action zips along quite quickly. The illusion is helped along by the shortness of the chapters. There are sixty-eight chapters, but just 321 pages. Also, I didn't figure out ahead of time who the big bad was. I wasn't entirely sure why the big bad snapped and went on a rampage, but I certainly didn't think it was that character.

This was one of those cases where I think the author has the ability to write something great, but this was a poorly plotted book. If I came across the sequel, True Colors, I'd read it, mainly because I liked the character who will be that hero. I'm on the fence about the heroine. She already feels a bit wishy-washy to me.

Review: Beauty and the Werewolf by Mercedes Lackey

Okay, so I'm fairly new at the whole 'reviewing ARCs for the Internet' thing. In the past, I was either blowing up Twitter (see Dragon Bound) or maintaining a covenant of secrecy between myself and the romance buyer. I didn't want to be labeled as the girl not to send books to because she told the buyer of a national chain that the last one sucked. Now, of course, it doesn't matter anymore so I'm free to blast my opinion everywhere.

I like this series and it got a good write-up in Romantic Times so when I saw it was available in NetGalley from Luna/Harlequin, I hit that request button wicked fast. Now, according to the NetGalley publisher guidelines, I'm supposed to wait until a month before the book comes out to review it. I don't particularly get the logic behind that because I'd think you'd want the buzz to start early and then carefully feed it until the book's release, but what do I know, I was just a bookseller for 9.5 years. To further make my life difficult, I'm not entirely sure when this book is/was coming out. I have it down as a June publication and NetGalley has it as June 28th, but Amazon and GoodReads says October 18th. So it's currently August 24th and God knows when you're going to be reading this. Hello from the past!

So, right, the book. First off, do not bother reading Beauty and the Werewolf if you have not at least read The Fairy Godmother. If Harlequin is smart, they will do a Fairy Godmother giveaway before Beauty comes out. Maybe they did, clairvoyance is not one of my skills. If you are already in possession of Beauty without having read any of the previous books and are being stubborn, here's basically what you need to know.

There are the Five Kingdoms, kinda like that 10th Kingdom made-for-TV movie, but much less self-aware. Hovering over these Kingdoms is Tradition. Tradition is like gravity or atmosphere, a natural force that the average Joe doesn't think about much, but that brilliant scientists study like mad. In the Kingdoms, a woman may be a wonderful person until she marries a man with a daughter and she slowly turns cruel. The youngest of the three brothers may find himself questing for a princess. Not doing a favor for the old woman in the road could have severe repercussions, you dig? Basically, Tradition tries to make fairy tales happen, even if the people at the center of these tales would much rather have ordinary lives, thank you very much. Fairy Godmothers are the ones who try to combat Tradition and manipulate it so wicked witches aren't roaming the countryside.

Now, Lackey is kinda smart here, because one would assume based on the title and main character's name that we are dealing with the Beauty and the Beast tale. In fact, Lackey starts off with Cinderella, turns to Little Red Riding Hood, and then begins to incorporate elements from Beauty and the Beast, but she mixes in other archetypes as well. The book is almost meta in the way it encourages you to pick apart the various story elements.

Despite by published by Harlequin's Luna imprint, this is not a romance and is more of a mystery set in a fantasy world with a few romantic elements thrown in. There are two main male characters, Eric the Gamekeeper and Sebastian the wizardly Werewolf. I have to admit, I wasn't entirely sure who Bella, the heroine, was going to end up with. I also had my suspicions as to who the dastardly evildoer was, but again, I wasn't certain until just before the grand reveal. Part of my uncertainty was due, again, to the way Lackey kept shifting the characters' archetypes. Eric, in particular, goes through a multitude of labels, Tradition at work.

The one quibble I had, and this is not a little one, was the fact that some of the plot elements seemed to be recycled from Lackey's older book, The Fire Rose. Wolfy wizard isolates young female in his very large residence where the only other human is a male who is assisting the wizard in some way and they are waited upon by seemingly invisible servants. During her stay at the residence, the female discovers the existence of magic (it's the exact same kind in both books) and Wolfy wizard takes her on as an apprentice. Over the course of the book, they fall in love and an evil is vanquished. Even the fate of the Wolfy wizard is kind of the same. However, I will say that the characters themselves are very different. Rosalind in Fire Rose is very prim and studious. Bella from Beauty is intelligent, but she has more street smarts and she's able to take care of herself. Fire Rose's hero, Jason, is an egotistical jackass whereas Beauty's Sebastian is more of a gentleman and a milder personality.

If I had to rec only one, I'd probably opt for The Fire Rose, simply because it stands alone quite nicely. However, fans of the Five Kingdom books will enjoy this newest installment. Quite frankly, if you're a Lackey fan, you should read Fairy Godmother anyway! This series would also appeal to fans of Kristine Grayson and possibly fans of N.K. Jemisin as well.