Monthly Tally: September 2011

Okay, so as promised, I'm only going to highlight a few titles from my reading this month. If you're curious about what else I read, you can check it out at GoodReads. I read 54 books last month and most of them fell into the 'meh' category.

In my opinion, the best book I read last month was Ecstasy Untamed by Pamela Palmer. You can read my review of it over at GoodReads. Yes, I only gave it four stars, but as I said, the book only works if you have read the previous books in the series. Call it the former bookseller in me, if you'd like, but I think I should be able to pick up any book in a series and still know what's going on. This is not to say Palmer doesn't recap some crucial information, but the book loses a lot if you're not emotionally invested in the characters. It comes out on October 25th and if you've read the Feral Warrior series, this is an auto-buy.

The worst book I read in September has to be Darkest Fire by Tawny Taylor. I won't reiterate why, as you can read it for yourself here, but I definitely don't recommend it. This book was part of my attempt to tackle some of the older titles in my TBR journal. I'm finding that I'm more flexible about my reading selections now that I'm not working at Borders anymore.

Angels of Darkness and the Storm Born graphic novel both got five stars from me. I'll be honest, a large part of that rating for Storm Born was the artwork. I'd read Richelle Mead's novel back in the day, but I wasn't particularly thrilled with it and the sequel, Thorn Queen, has been languishing in my TBR for quite a bit. However, the prose of the graphic novel parses the novel down to its essence and the art elevates it with its beauty. Sea Lion Books is going to be at NY Comic Con this year and I'm going to see if I can pick up one of the loose issues at their booth. As far as Angels of Darkness is concerned, obviously I never got around to writing that longer review as my personal life took a dive into Shitsville. I stand by everything I said over at GoodReads and I rec it for any paranormal fan who likes their stories with a dash of grit and darkness.

On Thea Harrison's recommendation, I bought Ilona Andrews's Silver Shark. I'm a big Andrews fan so I was willing to spend the money. It's a space romance, different from Andrews's normal fare, and unusual in narrative. However, there were times when it could have benefited from some editing as certain parts were confusing and there were several noticeable typos. It kinda killed any desire I had to go back and read the first book or purchase something else. So I wouldn't necessarily recommmend it, but I do hope Andrews eventually decides to revisit this world in a proper novel.

At the beginning of the month, I read Janye Castle's (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) Canyons of the Night. It was when I wrote the review for this book that I realized something was admiss. I'd always thought that Amaryllis, Zinnia, and Orchid were connected to the Harmony series. After all, they both focus on humans wiwth psychic powers tht arrived on the planet via a 'Curtain.' I started re-reading the older books and discovered the flower books are set on the world of St. Helens. It's funny, but I kinda feel like Krentz plagurized herself. I mean, Orchid was published in 1998 and the first Harmony book, After Dark, was published just two years later in 2000. To make myself feel better, I've started pretending that the Curtain opened up once and several colony ships went through, each to a different planet. I post-it noted several sections of my copy of Amaryllis for comparison purposes, but it got packed away as I prepared my room for new windows. I would like to do a more in-depth look at some point.


Category Totals

Romance: 41
Horror: 1
Young Adult: 2
Comic Strip Collection: 1
Graphic Novels: 4
Children's Nonfiction: 1
Picture Books: 2
Mystery: 1

Review: Game for Anything

Game for Anything by Bella Andre

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I know what you're thinking. Another sports book? Really?

Okay, here's what I was thinking: "God, I'm tired. I should start reading Blood Rights because Kristen Painter is going to be at Comic-Con this weekend. But I'm tired. And I don't want to stare at my computer screen while I eat my hot pockets. I don't feel like starting a new author right now. I just wanna read. I downloaded those football books last night. Because I liked the one I won, From This Moment On. I read the last one (Game For Love) already. It didn't suck. Andre is a pretty consistent author. I'm just gonna read one of these."

On the brainless read front, it delivered. The plot was fairly simple. Ty and Julie knew each other in high school, she lost her virginity to him, and the morning after was a disaster, fraught with miscommunication. Fast forward ten years, he is a superstar football player with a bad personal reputation and she is the image consultant hired to straighten him out. There's lots of sexual energy and more miscommunication, now sprinkled lightly with personal growth.

Now that I'm emerging from my hot pocket haze and my brain has started to sort through the different aspects of the book, I find a lot of WTF-ery is emerging. Like the ending. I mean, this was a pretty straightforward contemporary. However, the ending was a grand reveal worthy of a Scooby Doo episode. While this is slightly explained by the aforementioned grand reveal, I don't think Ty necessarily needed a image consultant. He didn't have a DWI, get caught doing drugs, nor did he have a revolving door in his bedroom. By today's standards, his perpetual house party is actually pretty tame. It seemed like he was still doing his job, showing up to practice, etc. So one would think Julie, as an experienced image consultant, would have kinda been like 'Huh? Something ain't right here.' A much better take on this concept is Jill Shalvis's Slow Heat.
This was also another book that takes place during its sport's off-season. As a result, there's actually not a lot of football in it, aside from a few scenes in the weight room. I would have liked at least an epilogue with Julie in the stands, watching Ty play. The reader also meets a grand total of ONE of Ty's teammates who, not-so-coincidentally, happens to be the hero of the next book.

I am definitely going to read the next book at some point, but I would recommend this series for those times when you just want to be mildly entertained without taxing your brain. I should really re-read the Susan Elizabeth Phillips football books now.

Review: Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors, #6)

Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors, #6) by Pamela Palmer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I am seriously wrestling back and forth over giving this five stars or four. I think I'm going to stay at four because if you have not read books 1 and 5 in the Feral series, you will not love Ecstasy Untamed as much as I do in this moment.

I don't think I can articulate properly why I love this book. The phrase that keeps springing to mind is "it was a culmination," which really doesn't make any sense. Let me ponder on a suitable analogy for a moment.

...

Okay, this is the best I've got. It's like Girl Scout cookies. Like, the majority of the year, you're like Girl Scout cookies, whatever, Keebler's tastes just as good, and then you order a box because your co-worker is nagging you, and then you kinda forget about it because there's that delay in between, and then the box arrives when you're cranky & PMS-ing, so you open the box, take a bite, and when the flavor hits your tongue, you're like, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW and then you're all sad because you only ordered one box and you have to wait until next year to order more.

...

Now I want Tagalongs.

Anyway.

Pamela Palmer is not one of those authors I think about very often and I've found her books to be a bit hit or miss. I still read 'em because shifter romances are my crack and so when this e-ARC became available, I snapped it up. I think that was, like, over a month ago. The heroine, Faith? Awesome. The hero, Hawke? Awesome. Cameos of pretty much every supporting character we've ever met? Awesome. Massive overall series plot arc advancement while tying up loose ends? Awesome. If you like the Feral series, you will love this book. I'm not quite at the point where I think the average paranormal reader should make their way through the first five books to get to this point, but if book seven is as wonderful as book six, I will be.



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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!