Last year I had a lot of fun window shopping on the Internet for a post on gifts for book nerds. Since it’s been almost a year and I don’t really need much of an excuse to look at pretty things, I bring you even more booky things, the 2012 edition. (click to embiggen)
My time as Keeper of the Book this month at YAckers resulted in a lively discussion of Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan. You can check it out over here. I will be writing up my own review and posting it up here soon.
Next month’s book is Shadows by Ilsa J. Bick. This is the second book of a series so I have to get cracking and read the first one (horror? meep). In the meantime, we’re offering up copies of Shadows to followers of the blog (there’s two books up for grabs: one for US, one for UK). For more details, check out the YAckers blog.
Bloggiesta is back again. This is an event hosted this year by There’s a Book and It’s All About Books. It’s an event where book bloggers work on their blog related “To Do” lists. I like to join when I can because it gives me some motivation. Once I put up my list of “To Do’s” on the Internet, I feel more accountable for actually doing them. Here’s what I want to do to improve this blog:
Work on my About page and my Review policy
Update my Review Index
Put more of my reviews on goodreads
Catch up on my reviews (I have 5 reviews to write)
For anyone else interested, Bloggiesta is September 28-30th, is very loose on what you have to do (you can do as much or as little as you want), and sign up is here.
This was a book that popped on my radar because of a On the Smuggler’s Radar post over at the Book Smugglers. Pirates and assassins and curses (oh my)! Throw in the suggestion of a romance in there and you have me obsessively searching for info online. Finally I checked Netgalley and it was there! I hit that button to request it in a flash. Meaning to read the book after the books I was supposed to read, I downloaded it and.. looked at the first few pages. Yeah, so three hours later at 2am I was done. I couldn’t help it. This was a fun fun book and it was so easy to zoom straight through it.
The Premise: Ananna belongs to a respected family within the Pirates’ Confederation, the Tanarau clan, and she’s spent all her seventeen years living on a boat. She’s proud of being a rough-and-tumble pirate, but when her family arranges an alliance with the low-ranked but rich Hariri clan by marrying Ananna off to their son, Ananna balks. During the introductions to her husband-to-be, Ananna plays along, but at the first chance she gets, she’s is on a camel and leaving her fiance in the dust. Unfortunately, the Hariri clan employs assassins when they are displeased. Skilled at both combat and blood magic, assassins are almost legend — not real. Or so Ananna thought, until an assassin appears. Desperate and terrified, Ananna makes a split-second decision which shockingly activates a curse and chains her to the very man hired to kill her.
My Thoughts: This book starts off abruptly. It begins right in the middle of Ananna’s meeting with her new fiance. She makes a quick assessment of his prospects as a pirate captain (not stellar), and escapes. At first I had some catching up to do to understand Ananna’s situation, but once she moves from prospective bride to escaped fugitive, I got the gist: Ananna is a pirate princess and being married off is not on her agenda. Fleeing on camel, Ananna takes to the streets like a female Artful Dodger, using the skills learned over a lifetime as a pirate to survive. The story is very dynamic — Ananna is constantly on the move. At first she just wants to get away from her arranged marriage, but when she finds out that an honest-to-goodness assassin is after her, her desperation ramps up. Assassins, it is said, are not just killers. They are blood magicians. It seems likely that Ananna will die–until a turn of luck puts Ananna in an partnership with the very assassin sent to kill her.
Ananna is a handful, with a lot of rough edges that come through in her narrative (“The sea crashed against the big marble wall, spray misting soft and salty across my face. I licked it away and Mama jabbed me in the side with the butt of her sword.“) Although she is seventeen, not more than five years younger than Naji, the assassin, her unrefined manners and pirate’s vernacular (peppered with ain’t‘s, double negatives and bravado) made her seem younger. It’s suggested that Naji sees her that way too – he is horrified by the whole situation. Assassins are by their very nature solitary. They do not spend their time looking after teenage girls.
There’s a gentle humor in an uncouth pirate girl taking on a magic-wielding ninja-assassin, then the two being shackled to one another. Even in the most dire circumstance, Ananna’s luck always leads to a path of ever-increasing disaster, and the story seems to acknowledge this with sly nudges. It’s not enough that Ananna has the wrath of a pirate clan behind her and she’s stuck in the middle of the desert, no, an assassin joins the chase. When Naji switches sides, things do not get better, instead they seem to get worse. The Hariri clan still wants Ananna dead and Naji has enemies of his own, enemies scarier than the Hariri– who now have Ananna on their radar. As Naji and Ananna continue their adventure, the hits keep on coming.
The setting of The Assassin’s Curse is something out of the usual Desert and High Seas Adventure canons. The magic of this world has familiar elements too – blood, herbs, an invocation, and an affinity, all combine to create a spell, but there is something new and fresh in Ananna’s experience of it. Her voice with it’s street edge, mixed with the meshing of familiar concepts in new ways (pirate and assassin, desert trek and sea adventure, a dash of weird thrown in for good measure) really makes the story. That, and the bickering between reluctant allies Ananna and Naji. I really enjoyed the way their relationship slowly developed through the book and the hope that it could develop into something more.
Ananna’s pirate persona and voice may not appeal to some, but while I did find Ananna young and hotheaded (with an odd resentment towards attractive people), this just made her realistically flawed to me. Likewise, Naji’s hang-ups with appearances showed his own human weakness. I hope this doesn’t turn into a story that advocates a bias against beauty, but I don’t think it will. I expect to like the next installment just as much as this one, and I plan to read it when it comes out. This was a lot of fun and I’m excited to see more.
Overall: The Assassin’s Curse an entertaining Fantasy YA story: it has swashbuckling adventure, a pirate heroine, and a blood magic-wielding assassin, for crying out loud. If that is something that appeals to you, I say try this one and read it for the brain-candy enjoyment of it. I read it in four hours. I had a good time. I will come back again for a continuation to this ride.
Assassin’s Curse comes out next week (October 2nd US/Canada, October 4th UK).
The Evie Scelan series one I’ve been following for a little while now. It’s a urban fantasy set in Boston and it centers on Evie, a bike messenger with a side business: finding lost things with her abilities as a Hound. What keeps me coming back is the true-to-life characters and the Boston setting.
The reading order is:
Book 1: Spiral Hunt (my review: )
Book 2: Wild Hunt (my review:)
Book 3: Soul Hunt
***** This review contains spoilers for earlier books in this series ******
The Premise: After Evie’s last tussle with supernatural forces in a battle to protect her beloved Boston, she’s left with the price of her endeavors. Firstly, Evie’s talent just doesn’t work the way it used to: it’s unreliable, starting and stopping unexpectedly. Scents can be hard to find, and Evie feels drained by a simple tracking. Secondly, Evie has something that doesn’t really belong to her — the Horn of the Wild Hunt. She has to return it to its rightful owners, who will not like that she sounded it. While this is going on, strange things are afoot in Boston. A mysterious fire on a yacht and bystanders paralyzed by fear is the first sign in a wave of disquiet in Boston’s Undercurrent.
My Thoughts: I have to admit, it’s been a while since I read the second book in this series. I seem to jump back into the Evie Scelan books every couple of years, so I remembered the ending and some very big plot points of Wild Hunt, but I was fuzzy on some of the details. I could fudge it, but I really wish I remembered some more of the details or that they were spelled out to me a bit more. This is not the first time in the series where the previous book’s events has had an impact on the plot, so I don’t recommend reading Soul Hunt without a least reading Wild Hunt, and I don’t recommend reading Wild Hunt without reading Spiral Hunt. Basically, you need to read these books in order.
The big plot points from the earlier book are these: Evie has the Horn of the Wild Hunt and needs to return it to it’s rightful owner or owners. Due to her possession of the horn, she brings the the hounds of the hunt with her wherever she goes, and the hounds are quite willing to give her their two cents on her life. Also, ever since she rescued rescued boyfriend Nate, she has noticed that her power has gotten weaker. She isn’t sure why, but she suspects it has to do with an exchange she had with the water spirit who had him. In the meantime, Evie’s relationships continue as before: she and Nate are in a serious relationship and his young sister is someone Evie has taken under he wing. Her friend Sarah is as optimistic as ever and is trying to organize the Undercurrent for future outside threats – a neighborhood watch with an emergency phone tree if you will. And Evie still is on the outs with Rena, a cop who was once a close friend, but got blames Evie for bringing her trouble and “bruja shit”.
While Evie has the remnants of her latest adventures to deal with, another issue springs up. An associate in the Undercurrent asks for her help and that leads Evie to a strange occurrence: a burning yacht. This isn’t that strange, but the behavior of other members of Boston’s magic community is. People tell Evie that they feel fear, but they cannot tell her what is causing it. Then the man whose boat burned down asks Evie to find something for him, something stolen generations ago.
With everything going on in Evie’s life: the Horn, her relationships, Nate’s curse, Nate’s sister’s Sight, the budding Undercurrent organization, her fatigue, issues with her talent, and her work (both as a bike messenger and a finder), the plot of Soul Hunt felt very fragmented. There were too many disasters vying for attention and Evie spends the story flitting from place to the next in order to deal with them all. I wasn’t sure what was the most important: the repercussions of having the Horn, fixing the problem with her talent, or this new mystery that has the Boston Undercurrent with its hair standing on end. When the story ends, one of these three becomes the main focus while the other two, dragged along for most of the book, are resolved very conveniently. There was something very dissatisfying about that after watching Evie trying to juggle it all throughout the book. I wanted something less pat for those two threads.
What I did like is that Evie is now part of a family in this story and she has support that she did not really have before. I think what did work with the tumbled mess of troubles Evie has, was the sense that Evie shouldn’t be trying to fix everything herself and there are people willing to help her. I loved the relationships, but didn’t love that the plot got too scattered while trying to prove this point.
This is the third book in the series and it ends in a satisfying place, but with enough leeway for more books. I don’t know if there will be any more though, as Soul Hunt was published in 2010 and no other books have been announced.
Overall: OK plot-wise, solid everything else. I recommend this one for urban fantasy fans who like a down-to-earth, working girl kind of protagonist who has relationships that are nuanced and true-to-life. This is the type of series where I care more about the characters and their developing relationships than the current disaster to be averted.
Other reviews: Calico reaction – 8 (Excellent) ” Frankly, this whole series is a must read for urban fantasy fans who want more female relationships in their stories and, if there MUST be romance, then said romance must be balanced with the story and not become the story”
I’ve been meaning to get to this series. Ever since Tithe, I’ve been a fan of Holly Black, plus this was supposed to be a YA with supernatural elements and a con artist protagonist. What’s not to like, right?
A big thank you to fellow book blogger, Laura of A Jane of All Reads for my copy!
The Premise: (taken from the blurb) “Cassel comes from a family of Curse Workers – people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they’re all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn’t got magic, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail – he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.
Cassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He’s noticing other disturbing things too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.”
My Thoughts: In Cassel Sharpe’s family, everyone is a curse worker except for him. With one touch they can bestow a “curse”. His mother can manipulate people’s emotions, his grandfather can kill, his oldest brother, Philip, can break bones, and Barron, the middle brother, works luck. Although curse workers are rare and blowback exacts a cost for each working, curse workers are the reason why everyone in the U.S. wears gloves and keeps their skin covered. Being the only normal in a family of workers is hard for Cassel, but thankfully, he has his family’s other talent to fall back on: swindling people. While his brothers rely on their curse worker skills, Cassel grew up fine tuning his ability to manipulate others by conventional means.
Now Cassel is enrolled in a private boarding school, but when he wakes up on the roof of his dormitory without any idea how he got up there except a dream of a white cat, his stay at Wallingford is put on hold. This is purportedly for the insurance liability, but Cassel suspects it’s because people think he might be curse-worked. Cassel has been careful at the academy so that people would forget his past– that he comes from a family of crooks and conmen, but this one incident reminds everyone. Despite this, when Cassel goes back to his parents’ house all he wants to do is hustle his way back into the school. In between the house cleaning his grandfather has him do, Cassel is on damage control and smoothing his way back in. But while he is figuring that out he notices some telling behavior from his family — especially from his brothers. They’re keeping secrets from him, and Cassel suspects these secrets are more than just hiding things from the non-worker. He suspects they have to do with the night he killed his best friend Lila.
One of the stronger aspects of White Cat was its world building. The idea of workers, a very small percentage of the population with genetically passed abilities, fits seamlessly into the story. Cassel lives in a world where their existence is a given, and he offhandedly mentions what most people in his world already seem to know: that workers exist in the criminal fringes of society, a fragment of a percent of the population, but everyone wears gloves because of them. Gloves have become so de rigueur that Cassel feels uncomfortable if he sees bare hands. A fear of workers is part of day-to-day life: people wear charms to protect themselves from being worked, and there is also an ongoing controversy about legislation requiring everyone be tested for worker ability. What isn’t as well known is how the abilities work, and here Cassel knows more than the average person because of his family.
What was less strong was the character development, unless we’re talking about Cassel. Since White Cat is told from Cassel’s point of view, he is the most well developed character. The sense of isolation — both from his family for being a non-worker and for Lila’s death, and from the other students at his school, is in his every action. He doesn’t seem close to anyone, and only relies on others when he’s forced to (it goes against what he was taught). He’s a great broody teen guy character and I really enjoyed getting in his head and seeing how his upbringing has messed with him. Unfortunately, that isolation made the supporting characters difficult to know: they got little page space compared to Cassel, and what there was was filtered through Cassel’s walls. Cassel is least familiar with his classmates but they are probably the most likable characters. His brothers are distant and untrustworthy, his sister-in-law disconnected, and his mother a manipulative nightmare. His grandfather seems to be the only one in the family with a proper concern for Cassel, but he’s left out of the loop. Even Cassel’s romantic relationships are dysfunctional ones and it’s not clear if Cassel understands either girl he thinks he loves.
As for the plot – I liked the mystery aspect to this story. There’s a sense of urgency to figuring out what’s going on — that until he does, the cards are stacked in everyone else’s favor. I really loved the concept of what was going on when all was revealed, but I figured things out a lot quicker than Cassel does, and I wasn’t as wowed by the twists as a result. It was nicely done, but there were so many clues that I ended up questioning Cassel for not being quicker on the uptake. Also, because so much is made of Cassel being a normal in a family of workers and having to hone his skills as a confidence artist, I had a certain expectation of Cassel as a manipulator. I think I was expecting Cassel’s tricks to be more.. tricky, than they were. Instead they felt really obvious. I don’t know what this says about me, but I seem to be in a decided minority in feeling this way.
Overall: I loved loved loved the concept, world building, and voice. But. Other than Cassel, a lot of the side characters weren’t fleshed out and I wasn’t as surprised by the story as I wanted to be. I liked this one, and feel like it has that Holly Black writing that sucks me in, I just wasn’t in awe (and I really wanted to be). That said, I think a lot of people liked this one more than I did, and I liked it enough and am curious enough to continue this series with the next book, Red Glove.
Other reviews: Bunbury in the Stacks – “Cassel is one of those bad boys that you just can’t help but have a thing for…because he’s also kind of a good guy. ” Chachic’s Book Nook – “While I didn’t find White Cat amazing, I still recommend it to fans of urban fantasy.” Stella Matutina – “I was somewhat less interested in the plot than in the overall setup.” Steph Su Reads – “Don’t miss it!” Jawas Read, Too! – “White Cat is an impressive and entertaining read.” (8 out of 10) Read. Breathe. Relax – “White Cat is a must-read.” See Michelle Read – “In this exceptionally character-driven novel, Holly Black has crafted a world so unlike any other YA book I’ve come across. White Cat is dark. Gritty. Intense. Just my kind of story.”
Day two of Book Blogger Appreciation Week involves learning about some of the people behind each blog. I was paired with Cari of Cari’s Book Blog. I asked her a lot of questions, from what are her pet peeves, to the highs and lows of being a book blogger. This is what I’ve found out.
OK, the obligatory tell us about your blog question first. For people who don’t follow your blog (yet), what can they expect from Cari’s Book Blog?
I would like to think I’m not your typical blogger who does meme’s. I review books, I share what I’m reading at the time, post pictures from events I have attended, and host giveaways. One of my favorite things to do is interviews, because as a fan I want to know more about the author. There are no set rules to what my blog is, because it changes depending on who I am at that moment in time.
What book are you reading right now, and what drew you to it?
I normally only read one book and listen to one audio, but right now I’m listening to one book and reading three. The audio is The Book of Blood and Shadows by Robin Wasserman and narrated by Emily Janice Card. I heard about this from Maureen Johnson when she was in town promoting The Name of the Star.
For my bed time read: I started A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, because I love the HBO show so I really should read the books, but I’m a little intimidated by the 700 pages!
For my lunch time book: I’m reading Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry this one was sent to me by a publicity company and I went to see Melissa Marr at Murder by the Book and she mentioned it.
I also need to finish Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton. I started the book last month and I’m half way done so I’m hoping to finish it in a weekend.
One of the first things that impressed me about your blog is the space reserved for your signed book shelf! I love it! How did that collection start?
Thank you! That picture is so outdated that my signed books have now taken over a second small shelf that holds about 100 books. A little over three years ago, I discovered that authors went on tour and that you could go and have your books signed! I’m lucky to live in Houston, TX, where we have great indie bookstores that bring events. I slowly started going to any and every event I could find and when an author I love doesn’t come to town I order from other indie bookstores and have them shipped.
Still on the signed books – I see a lot of copies of certain books. I am all for multiple copies (especially for books I love – I want the new covers). What’s the book you have the most copies of (and why that book)?
That would be any book by Maggie Stiefvater. I should explain I love hardcover copies so I have all of those. I also have the advance readers copies signed and a few paperbacks from the UK and US. I might also have a few extras that I lend to people.
Your living space is on fire, and you have only enough time to grab 5 books and escape! What five books would you grab?
Ah yeah I would just about die. I think I’m pretty realistic and know that everything can be replaced but if I had to make a choice I would say:
Signed Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally (everyone must read this)
Daughter of Smoke and Bone (signed advance readers copy)
Paperback Shiver that Maggie Stiefvater doodled in
The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting (signed first edition again everyone must read this)
Geektastic signed by Cassandra Clare, John Green, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Scott Westerfield, Sara Zarr, Holly Black, and Hope Larson.
You’ve been blogging since 2009 – a few years now. What’s the best thing about being a book blogger for you? What’s the worst?
Book blogging has opened so many doors for me. I had no idea that book blogging was even a thing and from it I got a job at an indie bookstore and I have made so many friends. I’ve been able to help debut authors by giving them a place to promote their books. I’m not your typical blogger who works with publishers so I always feel like I fly under the radar.
The worst is trying to stay positive when so much drama has surrounded the book blogging community. I think there will always be people who will try and bring you down but I just have to remember to put the blinders on and keep focused on my own blog and do it because I love it.
Do you have any bookish pet peeves?
Ah this is a tough one. I would say that if I lend someone a book I want it back in the exact condition and for it to be returned promptly.
Tell us 4 random things about you that people may not know.
This is really hard because I’m a very public person. I spill my guts on social media and I’m always at book events where a lot of people know me.
My favorite place to be on a Friday night is at home alone with books, tv, or organizing my closet.
I once took a picture of David Levithan’s butt. Ok so I was trying to take a picture of him signing a wall at the bookstore and I couldn’t get a clear shot. I promised him to never post it online!
I worry that people judge my grammar.
If you don’t follow me on twitter then you might not know I love fashion. I wear dresses almost every day to work and then to book events because I go straight from work.
Thank you so much for the fun interview Cari! I enjoyed meeting and learning about you. To find out what questions Cari asked me (and how I answered), you can check out her post here, and to discover even more book blogs, be sure to check out today’s BBAW event.
Day one of Book Blogger Appreciation Week is about other blogs you enjoy reading. This is a tough one because there are quite a few blogs that I follow faithfully. Quite a few. So to make things easier this year, I’m going to take a page from Angie’s book and highlight two blogs that I discovered this year.
The first blog I have to highlight is Bunbury in the Stacks. We just so happened to meet online and followed each other on twitter since we seem to have an overlap in bookish taste (especially with YA Fantasy), only to find out that we shared a mutual friend in real life (who couldn’t figure out how we knew each other when he saw us talking on twitter). We have since used this mutual friend as a book mule to pass books along (it is the source of much glee that there are book mules in my life). Heidi also writes the most excellent reviews with these perfect gems of insight that have me pausing and wishing I had thought of that when I run into them. You should check out her blog, and check out the guest post she did for Seven Days for Sevenwaters today, too (it is lovely and perfect).
This next blog is one I found through Bunbury, and that’s Books Take You Places (I think they were fellow students of the library arts and are in the same graduating class – but don’t quote me on that?). Alyssa is also a friend on twitter, and she strikes me as one of those people who is genuinely enthusiastic when she talks to you. You can tell. She writes thoughtful reviews (I am a fan of those) of YA where she discusses major elements of the story like character and plot, but most importantly she explains how they affected her. I can always tell from her review what her personal reaction was and I love that she doesn’t hold back on explaining her emotions when reading a book.
Go check these two out if you haven’t already. I don’t think they have nearly as many followers as they should!
Hello world. I seem to have taken a little break from blogging. It wasn’t planned. I was on vacation and thus lazy, plus I think there’s been stuff going on online that I wanted to breather from for a bit. I have been reading, but four of the books are coming out in October and I didn’t want to review them too early, and one of them is non-fiction which I don’t really review over here. 🙂 I didn’t plan very well, did I? I’m back now though. I swear! I am really well set for October!
To show that I haven’t been a total miscreant, here is some stuff I’m involved in, and some stuff other lovely bloggers are involved in that you should check out:
I was asked to join the YAckers, which is an online book club with a group of mostly YA bloggers, and I’ve been a member since July. Every month the Keeper of the Book chooses a few books and the members vote on a YA book to read. We read, and discuss online and our discussion turns into blog posts. There are a lot of no holds barred personalities in this club and it is a lot of fun. If reading discussion posts and hearing how a book affects people differently is your thing, check us out. I’m the newest Keeper! Next we will be discussing Sarah Rees Brennan’s Unspoken. This book bowled me over and I’m curious to see what the rest of the group thinks. Look for that discussion towards the end of September/early October. Until then, YAckers has discussed other YA books likeThe Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill and Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor.
“A strong character isn’t necessarily one that is kick-ass or rules the world or is, as a person, strong at all. A strong character is one that pops off the page and seems as real to us as we are.”
Also this month over at Book Harbinger, Holly is hosting “Seven Days for Sevenwaters, a week-long blog event dedicated to Juliet Marillier’s Sevenwaters series”. Oooo, I am looking forward to this one. It starts next week, September 10th. I’ve read (and liked) Daughter of the Forest and I have MEANT TO pick up the next one and kept going. I really should do that one day. I have a feeling these upcoming posts will be the right kick to do so.
Book Blogger Appreciation Week is next week too. This year, the organizers have decided to go back to basics and not have BBAW awards. I think that’s a nice change. If you are a book blogger, there are things you can do to join in, like the daily blogging topics and interview swap (you can still register for that – it’s open till this Sunday).
And tomorrow, September 7th, it’s National Buy a Book Day! Ahem, all I need is an excuse, so I am very jazzed about it. You can spread the word with badges for your site, join the Facebook event, check out the website, and of course — this is very important — buy a book.
In the meantime, I am waiting impatiently for my copy of Ashes of Honor. I would like the world to know that Fedex Smartpost is the devil! What do you MEAN it arrived in my town at 6:41am today but it hasn’t moved since then?! T_T Do you know how often I’ve refreshed the tracking page? Anyway, as soon as is it is in my hot little hands, I will be having the fangirl squee incisive and thoughtful discussion with Chelle of Persephone Reads. It will be epic. Chelle has already read it and I don’t know why she hasn’t burst yet from waiting for me.
This is a book I bought when it came out but I’ve been saving it for a reading drought (Am I the only one who does this?). I finally indulged last week, secure in the fact that after I read this, Andrews’ newest book, Gunmetal Magic, is available for my Ilona Andrews fix.
This is part of a series of UF/paranormal romances, each book with its own couple set in a world where a magical world overlaps our mundane one:
Book 1: On the Edge (my review: )
Book 2: Bayou Moon (my review: )
The Premise: Audrey Callahan is an Edger trying to go straight. She’s just been hired full time at an investigation agency, she owns a little house in the Edge, and she’s far away from her disappointing con artist family. Audrey is fed up with her parents enabling her brother by using her magical knack with locks to pay the costs of his drug addiction and continually choosing his safety over hers. When he father tracks her down to do a job with big bucks and big risk, this time to pay for a fancy rehab facility, Audrey gives him an ultimatum: either stop bringing Audrey into his schemes, or she helps him steal what he wants and he never contacts her again. As always, her brother’s welfare is chosen over Audrey, but stealing the item isn’t the end of it. She’s soon dealing with the consequences of her bargain when Kaldar Mar shows up. He’s a member of the Adrianglian Mirror, and tracking down the stolen item is his latest assignment. A trickster and thief himself, Kaldar is surprised by how well he works with Audrey. He wouldn’t mind taking things further, but Audrey has had her fill of con artists and rebuffs him at every turn.
My Thoughts: Kaldar was first introduced in the second Edge series book, Bayou Moon, as the fast talking, quick acting cousin of its heroine, Cerise Mar. The family lawyer and matchmaker, Kaldar is a family leader Cerise. He struck me as the type of rakish character that was a shoo-in for his own book, and here we are. Back in Bayou Moon his smarts in the courtroom and his skill with a blade (a Mar family trait), were the traits I remember him for, but in Fate’s Edge, it’s his tricking and thieving that come to the forefront.
At the core of Fate’s Edge is getting back the stolen item, but there are a lot of elements that make it more than your typical quest story. There’s the burgeoning romance between Kaldar and Audrey, trouble in the form of teenaged stowaways George and Jack, elements of horror and action with the Mirror on their tail, and a big keeping scoop of hustling to get the stolen object back.
I am a fan of caper stories, so all the conning and elegant manipulation was fun, and there was plenty of it in Fate’s Edge. It also proved to be a way of showing Audrey and Kaldar’s compatibility – each easily adapting to the other’s lead and balancing out any weaknesses. Brothers George and Jack are included in the cons and they had just as interesting a chemistry (if not more so). If you’ve read the first book in this series (On the Edge), you’ll already know George and Jack as the younger brothers of its heroine, Rose – and a couple of my favorite characters (one is a necromancer, the other a shapeshifter). I was delighted that these two got quite a bit of page time. Their struggles and individual reactions with being seen as ‘Edge rats’ in the Weird were creatively folded into the story. Likewise, there were other cameos from previous characters that didn’t feel gratuitous. We got a chance to see previous couples past their HEA, but also to get an update on old enemies.
As you can tell, there was a lot in this book that was not about Kaldar and Audrey. On one had I loved the non-romantic additions to the plot, but on the other hand, this left less room for romance. Fate’s Edge was the book in the series where the spotlight wasn’t just on the hero and heroine, and this meant the romantic plot felt shorter than in the other Edge books. There was less space to show a slow build up in interest in each other, and it felt like this book relied more heavily on some Romance short-cuts like the hero’s appreciation for the heroine’s butt to show the growing attraction. For the most part, the courtship really happened in what dialogue the two had (a lot of banter – mostly Kaldar making overtures which Audrey smoothly rebuffed) and in their partnership. This was mostly a straightforward woman-falls-for-the-Bad-Boy-despite-herself romance, and I think if there were more space, I’d have liked Audrey’s issues with con men to be deeper delved into. This is not to say the romance wasn’t sweet, just that it was I don’t think I quite got all the emotional impact I wanted because there were other things in the plot vying for focus.
Overall: Fate’s Edge delivers an entertaining story with devious scams, kick-ass fights, and further development of characters and long running plots, but while I felt like the romance was solid, it felt like it was less of a focus of the plot as it was in the previous Edge books. This was an installment where the plot was far more than a vehicle to propel a romance forward. Thus the romance was not quite of the same caliber as the previous books (at least in my mind), but this was balanced out by the elements that took focus from the romance: the extended cameos from George and Jack (first introduced in On the Edge), the thrill of the con, and peeks into what could come next.
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