This is the result of my second day at BEA. Even more books! If you look at the first days books you’ll noticed I got two copies of Kristen Cashore’s Fire and Gail Carriger’s Soulless, so I hope to give them away later on this blog. Keep an eye out for that. I’ve got a bunch of other swag not shown here which I may give away too.
Autographed – Rachel Vincent, Gena Showalter, Holly Black & Cecil Castellucci & Cassandra Clare, Gail Carriger, Julia Quinn, and Kristen Cashore signed their books.
BEA day 1 was awesome. AWESOME. I walked around with glee, and I met some very cool, very nice bloggers and authors, but ok, I’m old because after 4 hours I was tired and hungry and after 6 I was done. It may have been the 50 pounds or so of books I was carrying around. Here’s my haul for today (Shannon Hale, Scott Westerfield, Rachel Vincent and Sarah MacLean signed their books – heeeee).
An interesting YA – I’m drawn to this cover! I found this via Steph Su reads while I was surfing online today. This book comes out in October. The author’s website says:
Falling in love was never so easy . . . or so deadly.
High school sophomore Nora Grey is irritated to find herself partnered in biology class with a “tall, dark and annoying” senior named Patch. But their barbed exchanges only showcase their undeniable chemistry, and Nora soon finds herself lured toward Patch’s shadowy past, frequently enlisting her best friend Vee to help uncover his secrets.
Well I’ve been kind of sick this week but I’m getting better so by this weekend I hope I can keep my plans:
Since it is in NYC and I’m about 30 min away, I’m actually going to go to my first ever book convention: Book Expo America!
I also got involved in the Book Blogger signing that the Firebrand stall (#4077) is hosting so you can also come by and see me from 1 to 1:30 on Saturday (I’m sharing the booth with Sharon and Michael from Sharon Loves Cats and Personanondata). If you happen to be going to BEA this weekend, please stop by – I swear I’m not scary at all. And word is that there’s also contest you can sign up for there to win an e-reader. Here’s the Blogger Signing Schedule.
Also of interest are:
I’m really looking forward to meeting some other readers there 🙂
I got this book from the awesome avidbookreader.com. The review there was so interesting I was amazed I got there first to win the book!
The Premise: This book centers on a veterinarian, Abra Barrow, who lives and works in Manhattan. Her husband Hunter is a journalist, and he’s just come home from a several month long trip studying wolves in Romania. It’s not long before Abra has to admit that something has happened on Hunter’s trip – she suspects he’s had an affair, but at the same time the doctor she interns under suggests that her husband has come into contact with the lycantrophy virus. Hunter feels restless and unhappy in the city and declares he needs a forest and will be moving to his family’s home in Northside, New York. As usual he leaves little room in his plans for Abra, but to save her marriage, Abra quits her job and joins him. Thrown into the mix is Wildlife Removal Operator Red Mallin, a strange man at ease with himself and the wilderness. He’s got an interest in Abra and seems to know a lot of strange things about what’s going on with Hunter.
My Thoughts: This book is different from the usual urban fantasy (it’s marked as paranormal romance; I disagree – OK it’s about relationships and there’s a little romance, but it’s not quite romance). It’s more about the angst of relationships and marriage with the supernatural as a small part of that whole. The story reminded me of Nick Hornby or Emily Giffin’s writing with some Stephen King thrown in. In the first few pages I felt the discomfort of witnessing a marriage break up but throughout the book there’s also the discomfort of reading about the messy details of life – menstruation, smells, and hair growth patterns are all described. This book may have shades of woman’s fiction/chick lit, but it’s the darker, serious side of chick lit and fluffy it is not. The supernatural is an unknown world to most people but to those who do learn about it, it is scientifically treated. For example, lycantrophy is described as a virus which only affects those with a predisposition (work on isolating the gene is mentioned), and Abra seems to easily accept what happens with only very brief thoughts of calling a mental hospital.
The thing the struck me first was Abra’s husband Hunter. I hated him. When I first picked up the book, I only read about 50 pages in but later that night I had a dream about killing him. The way that Hunter treated Abra was never “obvious” abuse, and he seemed to swing back and forth between disinterest and contempt to attention and passion, so I could see the confusion an intelligent person like Abra could go through. But all the little things he would say that seemed to show a lack of respect for the woman he married drove me up the wall. I’d say his brush with lycantrophy may have brought this to the surface but reading flashbacks when Abra met him, I don’t think he was ever a nice person.
Then we meet Abra’s mother – Piper LeFever, a B-movie actress with a penchant for the theatrical and who always manages to make everything about herself. First I thought oh, Abra’s mother hates Hunter, is Abra rebelling? But then I wondered if Piper’s narcissistic personality just made Abra susceptible to the same type of thing in her spouse? Her mother made Abra the type of person who abhors a scene, the type of avoidant person who could get easily manipulated by Hunter – he often put her in the position where she had to either accept his crap or ignore it to avoid drama (narcissistic abuse?) Well this book got to me that’s for sure, I was (armchair) psychoanalysing the characters.
It’s a good thing that I was so fascinated by the dark relationships in this book, because the angst here came close to turning me away. I despised Hunter, and I on the fence about whether to dislike Abra for staying with him. About midway through the book I contemplated putting it down as a DNF but decided to keep going. Luckily that’s when things started getting interesting regarding another man’s interest in Abra and the hope of her leaving Hunter kept me reading on. THANK GOD for Red Mallin’s character! He was a breath of fresh air and I liked him so much more than Hunter. In fact, I hated Hunter so much I had no issues whatsoever with Abra’s being interested in another man when she was married. He was that bad.
Other minor comments I feel too lazy to expound on:
Overall: Really like nothing else I’ve read in urban fantasy – it is more like messy relationship angst with the supernatural as an aside. Avoid if you can’t stand books that go into details of real life relationship drama but go for it if that is something you find fascinating. Usually I can’t take angst myself, but it did make me think a lot and it was saved by a somewhat happy ending (and by Red Mallin’s character), but it’s a bumpy ride. I may wait a bit before I read book 2 – Moonburn.
Avidbookreader’s review (I know I ranted and her review was more glowing, but surprisingly I thought this was about a B read which is what she gave it too).
Is Steampunk the new trend in the fantasy genre? I’m beginning to see it everywhere I look. But what is it? The image above has tongue-in-cheek a formula Jeff VanderMeer came up with: Mad Scientist Inventor [invention (steam x airship or metal man / baroque stylings) x (pseudo) Victorian setting] + progressive or reactionary politics x adventure plot = Steampunk.
Some books to look out for:
The books coming out should be interesting. I see both authors with a background in romance and science fiction/fantasy coming into the same genre. I’m really looking forward to the results.
Wicked Game, the first book in the series was one of my favorites of last year. My review of book 1 is here: vox / livejournal
Insert whine:
You know, I’m re-reading my review of Wicked Game and maybe it’s just the time of the year, but I keep getting interrupted when I read this series. It has been driving me UP THE WALL! I need to hole up and turn off all phones for the next book. I’d read and then Life would interrupt and then it would take me days to be able to get back into it, so the reading experience became disjointed 😦
/end whine
*** minor spoilers for the first book from this point ***
Bad to the Bone starts out not too far off from the events ended in Wicked Game. Ciara has managed to stop the radio station from being sold to a media conglomerate and thus all the vampires in it (including her now boyfriend Shane) are safe for now. Not is resolved however – her con-artist father has disappeared, and Ciara’s relationship with Shane is the longest and most serious she’s ever had, so while Ciara and Shane are happy, the idea of commitment frightens her. These become minor issues however when at the station’s Halloween bash, their signal is suddenly hijacked by a fundamental christian radio station, and a reporter from Rolling Stone who happens to be doing a piece on WVMP becomes a bit too nosey about the vampires.
My thoughts: There is something about Jeri Smith-Ready’s writing that just works for me. It’s simple, not flowery, but it flows well from one scene to the next. You would think that the first person *present* tense would be odd, but I didn’t have a problem with it. When I think about what happened in this book – it seems like a lot, but I never felt overwhelmed with the information or that the pacing was too fast. It’s just that the relationships evolve along with the story at an appropriate pace: so while Ciara is dealing with figuring out who it was who took over their airwaves and what is the meaning of the ominous “YOUR GOING TO HELL” sign at the Smoking Pig, she’s also dealing with her own personal issues. That means – going to school and writing papers, deciding if she wants to make the next step with Shane, and worrying about her best friend Lori’s taste in men.
Ciara’s big flaw seems to be more about trusting people and making commitments because of this fear than anything else. Despite this fear she also has a huge amount of loyalty and common sense. So I knew she was sometimes a little overwhelmed by committing to Shane but I was a little surprised at how this manifested as in this book! I can’t really go into it because it would be a spoiler, but whoa, it’s interesting! I’m not sure I quite *liked* it, but Ciara really never betrays anyone, I think her panicked brain was considering escape plans, so that’s why I could accept it. Also whoa is Ciara and Shane’s sex scenes. This book is urban fantasy so romance is not a focus, the sex seemed more of a fact of being a “normal couple”, but I think Katiebabs should peer at them to consider them for her sex positions post. They are evolving as a couple and I’m very interested in seeing how it goes. Shane is still a bit mysterious though – he seems quite perfect, but we’re only seeing him through Ciara. I wonder how he really feels sometimes because with Ciara he seems very sure about the two of them – he has to have worries that he has to work through too.
Again I am going to say that if you like Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty series, you will like this one. Not because it combines supernatural plus radio (and they both do this in very different ways), but because the main character is a woman who isn’t particularly badass or a hunter/killer, they are women who use their own wits to solve problems and help others. Things have a feeling of “realness” to them because of the characters and relationships, and also the world is ours – the same time, the same geography, just with a supernatural element.
Random bullet time:
Overall: I really like this author, and this is my favorite series of hers so I think I’m already predisposed to like this book (um, full disclosure: I may have hugged my ARC when it arrived). Compared to book 1, I prefered Wicked Game slightly more because of the sweet romance in it that begins there, and it worked for me almost like a stand-alone, but it would be impossible to replicate that in the second book, so other than that, both books are equally well-written for the reasons I described in “my thoughts” above. Bad to the Bone ends in a good place but it more strings are left untied which make me want to read book 3 (Ciara’s uniquiness, the Control, Ciara’s family). I also am most curious to see what is going to happen with Ciara and Shane. Is Ciara just going to have to accept that she will lose Shane to time (which will bring her aging and his fading?) or is there some other solution for them? I am dying to know.
Bad to the Bone is out in stores May19th
Reviews elsewhere:
Other links:
I decided to do something I’ve never done before in this blog. An author interview. ooOooo!! Very exciting! 😀
I just reviewed Lili St. Crow’s new book, Strange Angels (link to wordpress / LJ) and I sent her some questions about the series and some general questions about being an author. She reveals some interesting information about the rest of the series, plus talks about being an author who uses plenty of profanity (hehe), and I think it gives people an idea of what to expect from this series. Thank you for answering my questions Lili.
Read on for more.
Strange Angels questions:
Please tell us something about Strange Angels. How would you describe this book?
It’s like Supernatural meets Buffy, plus Appalachian folk magic and Eastern European folklore, plus a soupcon of Vampire Hunter D. Dru Anderson, our heroine, has been traveling around with her dad, killing things that go bump in the night. When her dad shows up as a zombie, suddenly she’s on her own–and all the secrets her parents never told her start crowding in. The things she and her dad hunted start hunting back.
The scene with Dru at the beginning of the book with the zombie had a lot of suspense and I had to reassure myself that she’ll be ok because there would be no book otherwise. It reminded me of good horror movies where you’re freaking out along with the person on the screen. Are you a big zombie horror movie fan and if so do you have any favorites?
I’m not a huge zombie buff. I’ve seen Romero’s movies, sure, and I watched Shawn of the Dead and Planet Terror like everyone else. My favorite horror movies tend to include more vampires than zombies, because I’m fascinated by the polymorphous aspect of the vampire myth.
The scene with Dru and the zombie was in the very first bit of the book I had done, and when I was asked to do some YA I sent that along, so the editor would kind of see what they were dealing with. To be honest I expected there to be trouble over it, because it is such a troubling scene. But that is the kind of writer I am, and I wanted it up-front. I wanted to say, this is what we’re dealing with here, there is real risk and real danger. Without real danger to the character, horror just isn’t…well, frightening.
The werewulfen and zombies and other creatures in this book are familiar yet different. For example the zombies turn to dust after being “killed”. What’s your favorite otherworldly creature and why?
There are so many otherworldy creatures! I don’t know if I can pick a favorite; they are a feast for a writer. Certainly the creature I’m most fascinated with is the vampire. The permutations and changes of the vampire as each generation starts playing with bloodsucking as a metaphor are something I find fascinating. People’s vampires tell you a lot about them, a lot about how they view the world and what they’re scared of.
I noticed that for Strange Angels, you use the name Lili St. Crow and I’ve seen you as Lilith Saintcrow on other titles. Is this to distinguish your young adult books from adult ones?
Yes. I’m a fairly prolific writer, and we wanted to be clear that these books weren’t part of my adult oeuvre, so to speak.
How did deciding to write a young adult series come about? Was it just a natural progression – the next story you wanted to tell happened to be young adult, or was it more planned – you wanted to try your hand at it? And how different is it writing adult versus young adult?
I actually never thought I would be writing in the young adult. My work has plenty of profanity and plenty of troublesome themes that I thought would mean I’d never get close to writing anything for younger readers. But…I was asked if I had anything that might do for a young adult book, and I had the first few chapters of Strange Angels lying around. It was something I was very interested in, because I could tell the rest of the story was there, but I hadn’t had time to work on it yet.
So I sent those first few chapters off and started working on it full-time, and next thing I knew we had a contract for a series. And I was terrified. I’d never written young adult before, and part of the process was me calling the editor and saying, “You’ve read what I write, right? You know I put the F-word in things, right? You know characters are going to die, right?” And she was fine with that. That was why they’d asked me, as a matter of fact.
So I was still terrified, but I decided to just barge in and do it. Nothing ever gets done if you’re too afraid to make a move. Besides, I feel very strongly that if I show up consistently to take dictation, the Muse won’t let me down. My job is to be available for the words, and the words will take care of the rest.
For fans of Strange Angels – any influences? Are there authors or books you’d recommend for young adult readers?
Of course the first few episodes of Supernatural and the first two seasons of Buffy were huge influences, as well as Vampire Hunter D and Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John books and short stories. And Dru and her father listened to a lot of classic rock, so I’m rediscovering classic rock stations now, and music I listened to in my childhood since it was the only thing the whole family could agree on. The music is a huge part of my creative process.
When I was younger, I read omnivorously. I particularly enjoyed Stephen King, Alice Hoffman, LJ Smith, Robin McKinley, Anne McCaffrey, early Mercedes Lackey, and of course all the Algernon Blackwood, Robert Aikman, and Tanith Lee I could get my hands on. That’s not a bad lineup of authors, I think.
Strange Angels is the start of a series – do you have an idea how many books this series will be?
Right now there’s three in the series, with the possibility of another two books later. That’s about as far as it would be possible to tell Dru’s story.
Any hints you want to give us about what to expect in the second book? When will it be out and what will it be called? 🙂
The book will be out in November ’09, and it’s called Betrayals. We have two first kisses, lots of fight scenes, burning buildings, a car chase, and treachery. In other words, I had a lot of fun.
General questions
It seems to me that you are a prolific writer – the Dante Valentine series of five books all came out within two years and then you started the Jill Kismet series and I’ve seen books from you at other publishers (The Demon’s Librarian which I want to read, and Steelflower..amongst others). You must be very busy! Tell us something about your day to day schedule.
My day is pretty boring. Get up, make breakfast for the kids, tend to correspondence and the weblog. Make lunch, settle down to writing between the other minutiae of childrearing and keeping the house from sinking into chaos. Make dinner, clean up, go back to writing. Put kids in bed, then write until about midnight. Go to bed around 1AM. Get up in the morning and do it again.
See? Boring. Most days I don’t even leave the house.
I really liked Selene and Nikolai when they were first introduced in the Dante Valentine series and then reading the serialized novel “Selene” online. Are you planning to continue their story from where “Selene” leaves off?
Eventually, yes. I know what happens next. The problem is time–I literally have no time for discretionary projects at the moment.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks for asking me! That about covers it. Thank you very much.
Note: this review is based on an ARC I received from the publisher
Premise: Dru Anderson knows all about scary creatures like werewulfen, suckers, gator-spirits, chupacabras, ghosts, and zombies and she’s helped her dad track and kill a few. It’s a rough life but Dru has been doing this since her grandmother died and her dad came to take her with him. They’ve moved from one town to the next while tracking down the next supernatural target. Now Dru is sixteen and the latest town is Foley, South Dakota. They’ve been here for a very short time, still unpacked (though they never unpack anymore), when one night Dru’s dad goes out after something doesn’t come back the next morning. Dru knows something horrible has happened – her gifts warn her in her dreams and it isn’t long before she’s forced into battling creatures by herself. An unexpected ally appears in a schoolmate – goth boy Graves has taken an interest in Dru and offers his help despite not knowing anything about the trouble she’s in. Both of them are alone in the world until that point, but things get further complicated when Christophe shows up talking about the Kouroi and telling Dru she’s more special than she thinks.
My Thoughts: This is the first young adult book by Lili St. Crow. She’s also written adult books like the Dante Valentine series, the Jill Kismet series and others.
I’ve read a couple of books into the Dante Valentine series and Dante to me is a really tough kind of character and once I read some of her past I understood where her demons were coming from. I think it’s Lili St. Crow’s speciality to create strong women characters because Dru also has some elements of this toughness in her. She’s also realistic. Dru has been through a lot and her coping with her father’s death was dealt with in a reasonable way. Dru has to fall apart a little bit, and that’s when Graves finds her. She’s in shock, but she rallies because her life is in danger, and part of her coping mechanism is hearing her father’s voice pushing her on to survive. I prefer having a main character like this, especially since she’s our narrator.
Lots of action is going on as Dru and Graves run into supernatural creatures I was not familiar with along with some familiar ones (werewolves, vampires, zombies) with their own special twist. The zombie scene was particularly nerve wracking and brought to mind those horror movies where you have to watch through your hands! But maybe I’m the only chicken who does that.
It’s a sensory read – for example, weather is one of the things I found very well described. It’s winter in the Dakotas, and the descriptions of the cold and the snow and ice in a small town were prevalent throughout the book. Boy, am I glad it’s spring now because St. Crow’s descriptions took me to a place with bad winter storms and a hushed world covered in white.
Overall: If you want a recommendation for a young adult urban fantasy, I’d put this on the list. It has a serious, believable teen as a protagonist and the creatures that roam around in this book are really creepy. It’s refreshing to read an urban fantasy aimed at teens that doesn’t have a high school cliche as a main character because I don’t recall knowing anyone really like that. Dru on the other hand is tough, but she’s also vulnerable and scared and thinks that she’s just a kid, and she is believable. This is the start to a very promising series.
Strange Angels is available May 14th.
Reviews elsewhere:
I’ve heard a good things online about Julie James so when jmc_bookrelated offered me a copy of Practice Made Perfect (thank you), I jumped at the chance to read it, especially since I wasn’t seeing this book in my library system or in my closest bookstore (why that is I have no idea, both her books have great buzz online). Anyway, this one jumped to the head of the TBR because I’ve had a bad month and needed a good HEA.
Premise: Payton Kendall and J. D. Jameson are associates at the prestigious Chicago law firm. Both are highly ambitious lawyers who are good at their jobs and have been working their butts off for eight years towards the same goal: becoming partner. Everything seems on track for them until they discover that the firm is planning to make only ONE of them partner this year. J.D and Payton have quietly had an ongoing feud, but they’ve never been in direct competition before. To make matters worse, Payton and J.D. actually have to work together for the first time for a very important new client.
This is a classic tale of opposites attracting – Payton is a vegetarian liberal feminist raised by an uber-hippie mom and J.D. is a privileged conservative with a country club membership with rich, snooty parents. Payton can’t really remember why they’ve been fighting all this time, she just knows she must put J.D. down a peg or two. She’s very aware that J.D. fits easily into the good-ole-boys club with his country club membership and ability to talk sports with the other men in the office, while she has to work harder to have the same repartee with senior partners – most of whom are men. J.D. on the other hand believes Payton has an edge as a women – reverse discrimination means she will move forward just because having women in higher positions looks good to the firm.
My thoughts: OK we all know it’s totally bunkus what J.D. is going on about regarding Payton having an edge as a woman! Pah, and yet, with such things coming out of his mouth, he still worked for me as a hero because I just felt like he was just a big idiot for much of the book (especially when it comes to Payton – he’s just irrational), not truly an asshole. He didn’t really seem to cross the line into being a bad guy until something he did long ago to Payton gets revealed. That was really awful, but he made it worse because when Payton wants to know why he did it (she actually gave him a chance to explain), his first explanation really wasn’t one. I thought his explanation to his best friend was what Payton deserved, not what she eventually got (rushed and last possible moment).
So that was the biggest flaw for me in this book – the hero’s quite worthy apology (plus wait till you find out why they’ve been fighting all this time – another classic example of idiocy). But until that point I really liked both characters. There is an obvious chemistry between the two and I had a really good time reading about them and their slow realization about how they’ve really felt about each other for the past eight years. There is very little sex in this book – most of it relies just on their verbal dances and interactions with lots of sexual tension, though both of them are clueless/in denial about this for most of the book. I really like books like that – a slow buildup between two characters, and a realistic timeline before they hit the sheets (if anyone has other recs of such kinds of books, please comment, I will love you).
Julie James has a background as a lawyer before becoming a writer and it shows in the writing. Despite not knowing much about practicing law myself, I noticed a lot of details that seemed the kind of thing only a lawyer would know and it added a layer of believability to the day to day aspects of the story.
Overall: Really good read – loved the competition between these two characters and their inner dialogs. The writing is top notch – smart and humorous. I’m a fan and will have to go find Just the Sexiest Man Alive (James’ debut novel). I found myself wishing I could read faster, I just wanted to know what happens next. But – I was left with a nagging feeling because after that tallying all the things Payton and J.D did, J.D. was by far the worse person, yet his explanation was a little late and a little rushed, and in that aspect this book doesn’t quite satisfy. This was the only fly in my ointment however, and I think I’d reread other parts of the book.
Reviews elsewhere:
specficromantic 
