It’s back, and I’m ready.. the 24-Hour Readathon

Posted on October 7, 2010 by janicu

Alright. The second 24-Hour readathon for this year is happening this weekend (October 9th). It’s also my husband’s birthday, but he understands. I’m letting him ride his bike all day, he’s letting me read. We may go out for cake and a movie in there, we’ll see.

But for the readathon (I’m excited. It’s like a holiday! for reading!), the plan is:

ONLINE LOCATIONS:

WORDPRESS & LIVEJOURNAL – One post with updates as I go along like I usually do. This will hopefully not irritate people on the RSS reader with many posts on one day.

TWITTER – @janicu

READING MATERIAL:

Scott Pilgrim graphic novels – I have all of them waiting for me. I think that they’ll be something lighter that I’ll be able to concentrate on even when tired, for when it’s 2am and I’m about to die. I am really not a all-nighter person.

Killbox by Ann Aguirre – I think it’s time I read this and I think it will be as exciting to read as I expect so that will keep me going.

Glimmerglass by Jenna Black and Firelight by Sophie Jordan – I’ve gotten smarter about readathons. YAs are the way to go so I have a couple that were on the TBR that are possibilities.

There are other possibilities. The TBR is a vast thing.

SUSTENENCE

Lots of tea. And coffee. Candy of some kind. Fruit. Meals to be determined.

ANNOYING CAT WHO WILL DRIVE ME CRAZY ALL DAY?

Check.

Anyone else planning to do this? If you can’t this weekend, there’s another one coming up – the Halloween Read-A-Thon hosted by Lesley at Young Adult Books Reviewed. It’s on the weekend of October 15-17

Literary Tattoos

Posted on October 6, 2010 by janicu

I don’t have any tattoos. My sister has something like 10. I would have to think about it for a long before I got one. Maybe I’d go with a literary tattoo? I’ve been surfing and running into them lately. Last week I saw geeky tattoos being highlighted on the tor.com blog. This week I got an email that pointed a blog, The Word Made Flesh which focuses on literary tattoos. I spent a good hour there and following tumblr links!

Do you have any tattoos? Are they inspired by books? I’m curious.

(click for book referenced)

via The Word Made Flesh – blog associated with The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide

via Geeky Tattoos

both of the above via Fuck Yeah Tattoos

An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire

Posted on October 5, 2010 by janicu

An Artificial Night

Seanan McGuire

This is one of my new favorite series. It follows October (Toby) Daye, a half-fae changeling who lives in San Francisco and works as a private investigator and Knight for the knowe of the Shadowed Hills. An Artificial Night is the third book in the series. I reviewed the first two here:

Book 1: Rosemary and Rue –
Book 2: A Local Habitation –

The Premise: In this installment, Toby becomes involved when her friends Mitch and Stacy call her in a panic because two of their children are missing from their beds, and a third will not wake up. Shortly afterwards more children are discovered gone, including those of the Cait Sidhe, and Quentin’s human girlfriend, Katie. Signs point towards Blind Michael and his Wild Hunt that runs every 100 years. He is one of the Firstborn and no one who has tried has been able to stop him. To try is certain Death. When Toby’s Fetch shows up at her doorstep, it only confirms her impending demise, but because children are involved, Toby refuses to walk away.

**** If you haven’t read the first couple of books, I suggest you go off and read the earlier reviews. This one has minor spoilers for them *****

My Thoughts: This is a book where the mystery differs from the first two books in that Toby doesn’t spend the whole book trying to figure out who has the missing children and why. The main problem is really How to Get Them Back and Not Die in the Process. It’s refreshing not to have Toby completely clueless about what’s going on, but she does need help from her friends. In An Artificial Night we see a lot of characters we’re now familiar with. She has to go to Lily, the Lady of the Japanese Tea Gardens, the Duke and Duchess of the Shadowed Hills (Sebastian Torquill and his wife Luna), the Luidaeg, Quentin, Connor, and Tybalt. Toby makes much use of these allies, but they are not always able to tell her everything she needs to know or to follow her into Blind Michael’s lands because of certain Rules of Faerie.

It’s interesting to see the dynamics during all of this. First we see the reactions of everyone when they are sure that Toby is walking into her death. That her Fetch has shown up only reinforces their concerns. It’s telling that she has a limited lifespan while those around her do not. Secondly, because they think Toby is going to die, I think we see a few things from her friends that they would usually keep hidden. I think we learn a lot, particularly about Luna. We also gain more information about Faery and how it works. Particularly about some of the first races since Blind Michael is one of the Firstborn. There’s a pleasing mix of nursery rhyme, complexity, and strange rules which continue to make the world build satisfying. I think the grit and otherness and the Terrible Beauty is as Faery should be.

This is a series where much of my thrill is catching hints throughout each installment about much bigger story arcs. One of those is about Toby herself. Her past is something we’ve discovered in bits and pieces – and it’s only the most recent past (being turned into a goldfish for many years), that Toby has directly explained. Her past as a child, and her famous mother Amandine, are things we sometimes catch brief glimpses of and they feel like they may be important in the future. There are some cryptic remarks by many characters, that I don’t think she notices, but they’re repeated enough in this book that I’m SURE they’re important. I’m having a fun time puzzling it out and I have a few theories. The other thing I’ve been keeping an eye out for is hints about Toby’s romantic interests. As in the previous books, Toby runs into both Connor, a married selkie that she had a romantic past with, and Tybalt, King of the Cats. I’m firmly in the Tybalt camp, and I’m guilty of flipping ahead for glimpses of his character. Yep, I’m a flipper-aheader (sometimes). I was a little sad in the flip through that there’s not much Tybalt in these pages, but, after reading through it all, what there is enough to sustain me. So far it’s been very light on the romantic elements, but there’s enough possibility to keep me hooked.

Anyway, this book is not really about romance. In fact there is more emphasis on friendships than romance, particularly between Toby and her female friends. Have I mention that I am loving the friendship that’s developed between Toby and The Luidaeg? There’s a nice buddy dynamic hidden by threats from the sea-witch there. Then there is Toby’s Fetch May, who at first annoyed me (chipper and mouthy is not charming), but she grew on me when she became less of the universe’s way of rubbing in Toby’s Death and more like another friend there to help Toby. It helped that May’s personality became more distinct and different from Toby’s. I have certain suspicions about her in the next book which I’m dying to see if I’m right about.

P.S. There is an excerpt from the next book Late Eclipses at the end of this book which has me salivating to read what happens next (it comes out in March, 2011).

Overall: What an awesome series this is. Every time I read one, it manages to make me feel a jittery need to read the next one. Luckily, McGuire seems to be a prolific writer and so far we’ve seen two Toby Daye installments a year. I highly recommend you start the series from the beginning because there are story arcs and hints that begin in the first book and are cleverly built up on in each successive installment. It becomes a game to guess where things will go, and I do find myself obsessively wondering about things days or weeks after I’ve finished a book.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Lurv a la Mode – 5 scoops (out of 5)
Dreams and Speculation – 7 out of 10
Karissa’s Reading Review – 4.5 out of 5 stars
Fantasy Cafe – 8/10
Fantasy Literature – 4/5

The Family Fortune by Laurie Horowitz

Posted on October 1, 2010 by janicu

The Family Fortune

Laurie Horowitz

This week has been a week full of free time – I’m waiting around in the jury selection phase of jury duty. I’m not going to go into it, but let’s just say I’ve had HOURS AND HOURS of reading time this week (and it’s not over).

This was a book recommended to me in the comments of my Forgotten Treasure post for Book Blogger Appreciation Week. I had recommended a Jane Austen retelling, Pride, Prejudice, and Jasmine Field and Emily mentioned loving The Family Fortune. I already ordered it from paperbackswap, but I was almost done with the book I had brought to Jury Duty, so I went to the library (conveniently next door to the court house) and picked it up there too.

This is my 2nd review for the Everything Austen II challenge

The Premise: This is a modern day retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, that centers on Jane Fortune, member of an upper-crust Bostonian family that has just realized that it is broke. Jane’s father Teddy, and her sister Miranda flit from party to party, and indulge themselves often. Jane’s married sister Winnie, is an attention-seeking, lazy hypochondriac. And Jane is of course, the sensible one, who spends her time working on her literary journal, The Euphemia Review and giving grants to up-and-coming writers through the Fortune Family Foundation, which she runs. Years ago, Jane met and almost married struggling writer, Max Wellman, the first person to win a grant. Family friend Priscilla and her father intervened and it never happened. Now Jane is a 38-year-old woman who feels spinsterhood beginning to settle around her, while Max is a well-known literary heart-throb, and of course, their paths cross once again.

My Thoughts: This is Persuasion in a high society, high literary setting. There’s always the underlying knowledge of how people should act within Jane’s circles. In this aspect it mirrors Jane Austen in regard to the societal mores of the wealthy very well. The literary journal, The Euphemia Review, and Jane’s friendships with critically acclaimed writers and her “genius for finding genius” feels like another facet in this lifestyle. Like her family name, Jane has some clout in the literary world. This book is told from Jane’s first person point of view, and it’s suggested that The Family Fortune comes from Jane’s journals. Her literary fiction background feels reflected in the language of the book.

When this book first begins, Jane is a creature of steadiness and routine. Jane admits to wearing dark, shapeless clothes and not caring about her appearance. This life is a little drab and depressing, but when she discovers that it’s her old flame may be coming to the area because his sister is renting the Fortune home, a little reevaluation happens, and Jane starts to change for the better. Jane discovers a new literary talent in a writer named Jack Reilly, and becomes a little obsessed with finding him. She begins to pay attention to her appearance. She realizes she does have outside respect for her work with her family’s foundation and her literary work, but she also looks for things to do with her life besides The Euphemia Review. Much of the focus is on what Jane is doing and what friends and family she sees as she goes about her life, but we are aware as she is, of looking out from the corner of her eye for Max Wellman.

Max appears first when Jane’s father and sister go off to Palm Beach for the winter. Jane went to visit her sister Winnie, and runs into Max, who is a friend of Winnie’s husband, Charlie. Jane retells their back story and we see her reaction to seeing him again. Of course her feelings are still strong, and she thinks Max is as handsome and charismatic as he ever was, except now everyone else sees him as successful too, while she is the same sensible, reliable Jane. Max is a character I feel like we don’t see much of, even though he is the hero. He appears, and Jane reacts internally and we know she still loves him after all these years, but we have to rely on her side of the romance with little clue about him. What we see of his feelings has to be gleaned through Jane’s description of his expressions. I would have liked to see more from his side of things in this book, particularly in the ending.

There are a lot of secondary characters in this story, but Jane is definitely the main one. Even Max as I said above is like a secondary character. There’s first Jane’s family, and Priscilla, the family friend, then later on we meet characters that represent the Louisa Musgrove, Mrs. Clay, Captain Benwick, and Mr. Elliot characters. These characters mirror the Austen characters very well, at least in spirit. I thought that the modern day representation of Mrs. Clay was well done, and the Mr. Elliot character here took creepily manipulative to new levels (he started benign, but by the end of it he made my, and no doubt Jane’s, skin crawl) . Outside of these characters, there are other secondary characters which (I think) are original to this retelling. Most of these “new” characters are related to Jane’s work with literary fiction.

After I was done, I think I had two problems with the book. I think that these problems are in comparing Jane to Anne Elliot and Max to Captain Wentworth. First Jane. Next to her father and her sisters, Jane is the least self-absorbed, but because the story is told from Jane’s point of view, there are times when she notes things in others that cast her in a mean light. I realize it’s so that the reader can see her family for the people they are, but I don’t recall Anne Elliot in Persuasion as being someone who lists the faults in others. That was reserved for the third person narrator. So when Jane says for example “Miranda’s face was lined with excessive sun exposure. She should know better.” or that someone needed to “take care of the dark roots in an otherwise brassy head of hair”, it only makes her seem secretly as shallow as the rest of her family. I didn’t like this side of her. She also gets drunk and does something in this story I didn’t think Anne Elliot would do. Max on the other hand was much more of a playboy than I considered Captain Wentworth to be. Maybe I have too high moral expectations of two of my favorite characters but I thought his character was a little disappointing in this regard. This is something that falls under personal taste.

Overall: I think this is definitely to be recommended for that niche of people who love a good Jane Austen retelling, but are OK with an Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth who are not as pure as the original. I think that I have my particular standards of what my favorite characters should be like and this book doesn’t quite fit them (I found Jane a little unkind sometimes in her descriptions, Max a little too much of a playboy), so in the end I wasn’t completely satisfied. I still want to keep a copy of this book around though. While I had qualms about Jane/Max (YMMV), the upper crust Boston and high literary societies were unique spins on the society found in Persuasion, and the commentary and many details of the original are well reflected here.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Emily and Her Little Pink Note s – 9/10
Steph Su Reads – 4/5

Married with Zombies by Jesse Petersen

Posted on September 30, 2010 by janicu

Married with Zombies

Jesse Petersen

I picked up a copy of this book at BEA and then was sent a completed copy by Orbit books.

The Premise: Sarah and David are a young married couple dealing with a disillusionment in each other. They’re constantly fighting and on the verge of a divorce, and going to regular marriage counseling sessions which don’t seem to be working. Things change when at one of those counseling sessions, they’re surprised to discover their therapist feeding on the last client. The zombie apocalypse has arrived, and it may have come at the right time to save their marriage.

Read an excerpt of Married with Zombies here

My Thoughts: This book is told from the first person viewpoint of Sarah. Sarah is pretty frank and sometimes a little foul mouthed. She and Dave are a young couple, in their early twenties. David recently decided to leave school and is trying to decide what he wants to do with his life, and Sarah is the one supporting them both. When it comes to their problems, I think that there was a bit of a tightrope walk there, particularly because we’re seeing the marriage from only Sarah’s point of view. Her marriage has to sound like it’s on the rocks but with enough there for the reader to want her problems patched up. So in the start of the book, when she complains about her husband, I do feel like she’s overreacting over little things, but she throws in enough suppressed feeling for him for me to see that things could improve. When Sarah and David work together and as an extension of that actually talk to each other, I could believe the progression.

Married with Zombies is like a horror movie – pure entertainment for a few hours, with the same sort of horror movie rules and expectations. One action packed scene quickly follows another as Sarah and David figure out what’s going on and learn how to deal with it. The story progresses like a horror comedy – there’s nasties which the couple has to dispatch, close calls, and death. There are surprises and twists, but like all horror, I don’t expect everyone to come out unscathed. The humor is in the zombie plague bringing the protagonists together, and so each chapter has a tip for zombie killing marital relationships like “Address one issue at a time. You can’t load gasoline, pick up food, AND kill fifteen zombies all at once.”

Overall: Ultimately this book has two things. Zombies and Sarah and Dave’s relationship. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. It’s a quick, pulse-pounding read. If that’s all you want, this delivers. If you are looking for more, I’m not really sure you will find it. In terms of the relationship drama – mmm, it was OK. I guess I thought that sometimes these two were making really obvious mistakes, but that wasn’t really the problem. I think the problem is that there was something missing in the characters themselves, and I didn’t feel like I really get to know them other than they were sort of a generic young urban couple who happen to argue a lot (and kill zombies). Perhaps that will come in the second book, Flip This Zombie, which comes out January 2010 (the third book The Zombie Whisperer is slated for June 2011).

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books – two B- reviews

Guest review on Jawas Read, Too! & WordPress feed hiccups

Posted on September 28, 2010 by janicu

Over at the awesome speculative fiction book blog, Jawas Read, Too! is the (relatively) new Book Uno feature:

The Rules

Player 1 reads a book and picks a item (type of character, setting, genre, relationship, etc…) from that book which will be the theme (or criteria) for Player 2 to use in choosing the next book in the game. Player 2 chooses a book that matches the theme chosen by Player 1 and reviews it. Players choose themes for each other, not specific books.

I was delighted to play. My challenge was to read a book in the speculative fiction genre with a “female protagonist”. I reviewed:

Please head on over, see what I thought about it (hint: ♥♥♥!!) and leave some comment love!

A Note about the WordPress feed:

If you noticed weirdness this weekend where the wordpress feed was posting really old posts (dated 2009) or anything like that, I’m sorry.

I’ve been losing my mind trying to make sure that all the book cover images that were hosted on vox, which is going down at the end of this month (aka Thursday), would be hosted on janicu.wordpress.com. Of course 3 years of posts is a lot. There was no easy way to do this automatically (I found out after 3 weeks of trial and error and emails to support). In the end the “simplest” way was to import all of vox over here, and since this wordpress has mirrored my vox blog since April 2009, there was overlap. This past weekend I manually edited about a year and 5 months of posts to fix the overlap. Weird feed hiccups was the result.

That was also why I was rather slow in replying to comments. I was just slogging through editing approximately 240 posts. But it’s done now, and I’ve come out relatively sane. *knock on wood*. 😉

Now I just have to update my review index. And figure out what to do about the vox images on the livejournal mirror. Ahhhh!!

Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews

Posted on September 24, 2010 by janicu

Magic Bleeds

Ilona Andrews

After finishing Bayou Moon, I had a hard time reading anything that wasn’t Ilona Andrews so I took a break from all other books, and started Magic Bleeds. I’d bought it recently as a present to myself, and I knew I’d be ignoring other books for it. I think it was a huge feat of will to wait this long both to buy it and to read it.

This is the fourth book in the Kate Daniels series:

Book 1: Magic Bites –
Book 2: Magic Burns –
Book 3: Magic Strikes –
Novella – Magic Mourns in Must Love Hellhounds anthology –

The Premise: It’s been a little while after the events of the last book, and Kate is back to work for the Order. During her usual rounds, she’s sent to investigate a bar brawl in the city. The routine job turns out to be anything but when she discovers that a customer was skewered on a pole, and his body is ground zero for some kind of virulent, magic induced-disease. Kate digs deeper and learns that a strange hooded man has been moving steadily north from Florida leaving behind outbreaks and chaos. In the meantime, Kate and Curran’s relationship is entering unknown territory, but with the two of them, of course it isn’t simple.

Read an excerpt of Magic Bleeds here

My Thoughts: I’m going to talk about Kate and Curran first (in a non-spoilery way). I was a little worried, as I always am when I begin an urban fantasy series, that the romance was going to be dragged out forever. Yes, I do like it when there’s a slow build to these things, but at a certain point you just want something to HAPPEN already. I was pleased that we were getting somewhere in the previous book, Magic Strikes, but you never know with Kate, who is very stubborn, especially about putting people in danger because of who she is, and Curran, who takes “control freak” to a new level. Not to mention that neither of these two are what I’d call experts in relationships. For a long time I’ve enjoyed watching the dance that these two have been doing, wondering what would happen next but having no idea. I’m happy I now know.

Magic Bleeds is a book where things that were hinted at in earlier books begin to progress to a new level. I’ve already talked about there being more focus on the relationship with Curran, but the other part is Kate’s past beginning to catch up with her. Magic Bleeds makes it very clear that the laying low she’s been doing for her whole life is not working any more, and recent events are linked to that part of her life. There is some fascinating back story that is revealed in Magic Bleeds. I feel like we’re really getting closer to The Big Showdown now. I want to know more, but it’s hard to guess what Kate is going to face next because these books are very creative in their use of mythology – there’s gods of many pantheons here.

Other than that I think this is a book which meets expectations set up by the rest of the series. Kate is her usual self with her bulldozing-rather-than-being-diplomatic persona (although she does show some restraint a time or two). Kate doesn’t do this out of stupidity, but rather a stubborn need to protect others even at the expense of herself. We have appearances from all our favorites – Jim, Derek, Julie, Dali, Aunt B, and Andrea. Not to mention Saiman, who brings creepy to new levels. There are also a couple of new faces. (I’m beginning to see it as a Andrews signature if the book has the main character mentoring a wayward kid). And of course, the ever brilliant world building which I always end up feeling pleased by. There’s a lot of thought that seems to go into it – the culture and customs of different Atlanta groups (shapeshifters, the Guild, the Order, the Family), the explanation behind the magic and the mythology; it all comes together to create a rich and vibrant backdrop for the story. All of this plus a hint of humor.

Overall: An especially satisfying installment to this excellent series. This one has a little bit more focus on the relationship between Curran and Kate, but it’s very well balanced with the action and the plot. I think Andrews is a favorite of many, so I’m probably preaching to the choir right now, but if you happen to be reading this and haven’t read this series, um… please do. And give it until the second book. I love this series and so far I haven’t felt disappointed yet.

Cool Link: Special Excerpt from Magic Bleeds from Curran’s POV (warning- spoilers)

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Angieville – “Every single expectation met. And then some” — (I loved this review. Encapulates how I feel very well)
Chachic’s Book Nook – “I still can’t stop thinking about this book”
Emily and Her Little Pink Notes – 5/5
Fantasy Cafe – 9/10
Breezing Through Books (Dual Review) – A grades from both readers
SFF Chat – liked with reservations
Tempting Persephone – Loved it
Literary Escapism – “another fabulous story and just reaffirms how much I adore the writing style of Ilona Andrews”
Calico_reaction – Worth the cash (I liked this review! Some spoilers in the middle, but warning when to skip ahead)

Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews

Posted on September 22, 2010 by janicu

Bayou Moon

Ilona Andrews

Bayou Moon is the sequel to Andrew’s first Edge book, On The Edge, which I reviewed here: . This series is set in a place that straddles two worlds – there’s the Broken, where magic is non-existent, and there’s the Weird, where pure-blood families rule and magic is a part of life. These places exist in the same place but on different planes, and in the space between them is the Edge, where outlaws and the out-of-luck flourish.

I was lucky enough to be sent a advanced finished copy of the book.

The Premise: While this is the second of a series, the focus in this book is on a different couple than On the Edge. William was a secondary character in the first book, but this time it’s his turn to be the hero. William is a wolf changeling with a past as a soldier in the Weird, and a big chip on his shoulder. He’s been just passing time in the Broken, when agents of the Adrianglian Secret Service arrive and ask him to hunt down an old nemesis and to retrieve what he’s been searching for in the Mire. Spider is an agent of the Dukedom of Louisiana’s Hand, and was once was responsible for the deaths of a group of young changelings. William came close to killing him but failed. Spider has been reported to be in the Mire, looking for an edge in the secret war between the two Weird nations of Adrianglia and Louisiana. In his quest to find Spider, William runs into Cerise, a girl whose path seems to be the same as his. She too has an interest in Spider, because her parents have just been kidnapped by his agents, igniting a long burning clan war between her family, the Mars, and their rivals, the Sheeriles.

Read an excerpt of Bayou Moon here

My Thoughts: If you are familiar with Andrews urban fantasy series which focuses on a heroine in post-apocalyptic Atlanta, this series shares some of the strengths of that one, namely excellent world building, heroes and heroines who are interesting mentors to lost youth, and plenty of characters with kick-ass skills. However, the Edge series has more of a focus on a romantic relationship than the urban fantasy Kate Daniels series. Each book has a hero and heroine who eventually get together, but I still find this series different from your typical paranormal romance because the world building and the plots are so unusual. It almost seems to be a urban fantasy romance series (the writers call it a “rustic fantasy”). It defies categorization, but I think people who like romance and/or urban fantasy will like it.

The first thing that I noticed about Bayou Moon was it’s size. It’s immediately obvious that this paperback is thicker than it’s predecessor, and clocking at 462 pages, it looks to be longer than any other Ilona Andrews book out so far. Don’t worry. This is a good thing. I think that this is one of the few books of this length where I wasn’t paying attention to what page I was on and I was actually happy that there was more to read. Even with this length I had polished off the book in a couple of days. Not only that, the length meant that there is plenty of room for not only a romance but for the complexities of the Edge culture, Cerise’s large and interesting family, and for revealing plenty of monstrous enemies.

I think before I talk about the characters, I have to talk about the Mire, the swamplands of the Edge. The people of the Edge are hard. They are known for family unity and for long held grudges that span generations. I loved the Wild West meets Mob Family mentality that the Edgers had. It breeds some very unusual (and perhaps a little crazy) people. But then, take that and add a swamp full of dangerous creatures (sharks, water snakes), and places impassable except by boat. Its not for the fainthearted. It stands to reason that this gritty, wild place in the Edge is where William would find the woman for him.

Being a changeling makes civilized human behavior a difficult language that William has had to learn, and while he yearns to find a woman that accepts him, he’s been disappointed in that area many times. He may have amazing physical strength and skill, but emotionally I think of William as the more vulnerable Edge hero. Cerise is quick to appreciate William’s positive attributes, but she feels that crossing paths with someone she’s interested in has happened at the worst possible time. Cerise is a heroine I’m familiar with in Andrews’ books – smart, strong, and capable, but she also carries very big responsibilities. She’s in charge of her family’s finances, and when her her parents are kidnapped, she is the one to step forward and take on the leadership of the Mars and deal with both finding her parents and with the opportunistic Sheeriles.She has too many people relying on her to be selfish and indulge in a romantic interlude. There is a slow build in their relationship due to caution on both sides, but there is a strong romance plot in this story, compared to the Kate Daniels series, where it is less overt. It passes my personal standards with plenty of emotional buildup to go along with the physical side of the romance, and sex that did not feel gratuitous (hooray!).

The plot in this book was such that there was plenty of room for many secondary characters. There are the bad guys (the Hand), the good guys (Cerise’s family) and the in-between. It’s a mark of excellent writing that every one of the characters where distinguishable and not cliched (I particularly liked with the conflicted feelings of what-could-have-been between Cerise and the Sheeriles’ oldest son). Cerise’s family was huge, but only a fraction of those are highlighted on the page so I was never confused or overwhelmed. I don’t think I can go over them or this review would double in size, but my favorites would be Cerise’s younger sister, Lark, who thinks she is a monster and sleeps outside, and her cousin Kaldar, the family matchmaker and general irrepressible rogue. The large family meant for some impressive battle scenes against the Sheeriles and against the Hand. Of the Hand, we catch less glimpses of, since the focus is mainly on William’s nemesis, Spider, but in many ways the Hand agents are less human after undergoing a process which changed their bodies and fractured some of their minds. They reminded me of the anime Ninja Scroll where the bad guys, the Devils of Kimon, have inhuman enhancements (link to youtube. Warning: icky anime death) which make them terrifying killers. There were some pretty nasty monstrosities in the bunch, but Spider, who is sane, is the creepiest for it. He’s an excellent villian, and we get some hints about his back story too.

Overall: The Edge series straddles genres to create a world that’s unlike any other, and I found Bayou Moon a rare book that entertains so well, I was lost to everything else. All I wanted was to be where I was, enjoying myself while being pulled along to a satisfying conclusion. What a pleasant ride that was.

Bayou Moon is longer than it’s predecessor, but that room only makes it better, because there’s space for a more complex plot, more back story, more world and character building. If you liked the first book, you’ll love this. If you haven’t, I recommend it if you like paranormal romance or like urban fantasy and are open to romance or vice versa. This book has cameos from previous characters, but I think it can be read as a standalone and out of order.

According to the Ilona Andrews website, there are two books contracted for the Edge series, but I’m crossing my figures that there will be more. There are a couple of men in Cerise’s family who I’d love to be in the next book (Kaldar, anyone?)

Bayou Moon comes out September 28th.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews::
Angieville – ” Bayou Moon struck me as a stronger, darker, meatier installment in the series”
Fantasy and SciFi Lovin’ News and Reviews – 4 out of 5 stars
Dreams and Speculation – 6 out of 10
Scooper Speaks – “Bayou Moon is a keeper in my opinion”

Restoree by Anne McCaffrey

Posted on September 20, 2010 by janicu

Restoree

Anne McCaffery

I am not sure where I heard of this book. I thought it may have been somewhere on the paperbackswap forums, but a quick search says no. Anyway, what sold me was someone saying that it was a science fiction that had a romance in it where the heroine’s first impression of the hero was that he was ugly and an idiot. I’d been debating whether to get it but holding back, until I saw it for 50 cents at the a library sale section of my library.

The Premise: Sara is a young, plain looking, twenty-something librarian working in New York City, when one day walking through Central Park she is overwhelmed by a terrifying force and she blacks out. She endures some kind of horror and when she regains her senses she finds herself in a new planet, in a new body, and a caretaker of an a seemingly ugly man with very diminished mental capacity. After some time pretending to be the lackwit the guards think she is, Sara realizes that the man is being drugged. When Sara brings him back to his senses by sharing her undrugged food, she discovers that the man is actually Harlan, the Regent of the planet she’s on – Lothar. Together they escape and try to fight the people who put them in the sanitarium in the first place, and discover terrible deeds done during Harlan’s incapacitation.

My Thoughts: As I was reading this book, I could tell that this was an older McCaffrey title – there were old fashioned technology mentioned in it, and romantic tropes like a virgin heroine and the idea of “claiming” (I think it’s used as a sort of marriage here) that I wasn’t used to seeing from this author. Turns out this is McCaffrey’s first published book and it came out in 1967, so that explains it, and it works – the semi-familiar tropes are more than made up for by the parts that are well thought out story building. The fantasy of waking up in a beautiful body does happen to the heroine, but rather than making her a Mary Sue, the new body makes her more interesting because of why she has one. Her flesh was eaten (shudder) by an alien race called the Mil – a race that are the Lotharian’s greatest enemy. They’re the ones who abducted Sara from Earth in the first place, and somehow she ended up in Lothar afterward, where someone performed a reviled procedure called restoration on her. The fact that she’s a restoree is a death sentence on Lothar because of the stigma associated with it.

This idea of restoration and the fact that it’s considered taboo in Lothar is a unique concept, and there are other carefully thought out ideas here that I really enjoyed, like the rules for Regency and ascendancy to Warlord or the political mapping of the world. I thought it was a very clever concept that much of Lothar’s culture has been influenced by their war against the Mil, and they had gaps in technology because of it too. For instance, they wrote on slates, not yet on paper, but they also had spaceships and explored their nearby galaxies. The world building was well done and fed into the plot perfectly. This is not a “light” science fiction story and it has an interesting take on first encounters and alien technology and how they affect a world.

In the FAQ on Anne McCaffrey’s website it says ““Restoree” was a once-off jab at the way women were portrayed in science-fiction” and that “it served its purpose of an intelligent, survivor-type woman as the protagonist of an S-F story”. As a heroine, Sara is smart and resourceful and she’s instrumental in helping Harlan escape and in getting back his power, but there are chunks where her role is more of an observer. Mulling over the statement about Sara in the FAQ, I thought about Sara, and eventually I decided that I found her likable but maybe a hair idealistic. This is where this impression is from: the romance happens early and then the two are separated, so by the end of the book, when she can do no wrong in the hero’s eyes, I question it a little. I think I’m probably being a little unfair in that, but I wanted to see more of how they fell in love, and more of them together. Anyway, this was a minor complaint. The other minor nit I had was how quickly the heroine learned the language just through overhearing it. Supposedly she was on Lothar for months so she may have subconsciously learned a lot while she was in a catatonic state, but suddenly “waking up” and understanding what people were saying required some suspension of disbelief.

When I read this book there are things that remind me of the first part of Cordelia’s Honor (Shards of Honor ) – a resourceful heroine, the hero and heroine have to work together, the hero comes from a military based society, and the concept of a Regent in this society are all there. This was done very differently, and I think I liked the slow build in the romance in Shards of Honor a bit better, but there’s enough there for me to suggest this book for those who enjoy Bujold.

P.S. The cover.. mmm hmm. I don’t think I would have thought to pick this book up on this cover alone.

Overall: This was published in 1967. I think that makes it an old school science fiction romance. It’s an oldie but a goodie, and I recommend it for those looking for a quick read with a similar feel to Lois McMaster Bujold.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s (I see links to used copies for under a dollar there – see “This title in other editions”) | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Please let me know if you’ve reviewed this one and I’ll link it here!

Book Blogger Appreciation Week: Forgotten Treasure

Posted on September 17, 2010 by janicu

Thank goodness for Book Blogger Appreciation Week. Work is kicking my butt this week and I am behind in reviews, but I can at least do a post on the daily topics. Today’s is Forgotten Treasure:

Sure we’ve all read about Freedom and Mockingjay but we likely have a book we wish would get more attention by book bloggers, whether it’s a forgotten classic or under marketed contemporary fiction. This is your chance to tell the community why they should consider reading this book!

I’ve been reading the posts on this topic with particular interest. I always love to see the hidden gems highlighted. I’ve been pondering what book to highlight myself all day. There are a lot of books that I consider oldies but goodies but which I see people still pimping (and rightly so), like Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, The Changeover by Margaret Mahy, and Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. What book should I choose?

I chose..

Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field

This was one of my top five reads of 2008 I think. And I’ve mentioned it a couple of times on the blog. Let me repeat myself. This is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice with a journalist named Jasmin Field as the Elizabeth character and a Hollywood star named Harry Noble as the Darcy character. They meet when Harry is in London directing and starring in a theatrical version of P&P, and casts Jasmin in the lead role, even though he manages to insult her by calling her the “Ugly sister”. It’s very British and there’s lots of friends and socializing and some swearing. And I loved it. It probably falls under “chick lit” but it’s not fluffy by any means. It has one of my favorite modern-day interpretation of the first Darcy proposal scene. I’ve read most of Nathan’s backlist (one book away from reading them all), and this was my first, and thus has a special place in my heart. I wish more people had read it.

By the way, I didn’t sign up for the interview swap on Tuesday (because I meant to and then forgot about it), but I did do an impromptu one at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader!