What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 12-17-11

Your eyes do not deceive you. This virtual nightstand post is indeed coming to you on a Saturday. Why, you ask?

Because Sunday, December 18 Reading Reality is the host of the Unacceptable Risk blog tour. So it will be my pleasure to have a guest post from Jeanette Grey, the author of Unacceptable Risk, as well as a review of her excellent science fiction romance and a giveaway of one copy of the book.

And we’re still in the middle of moving. So the actual nightstand just got stripped to its essentials today. The virtual one is getting something of a workout. It’s hard to concentrate amid piles of boxes. My office has developed an echo. All the books that formerly lined my walls clearly had a major sound-dampening effect. The boxes, not so much.

I looked ahead to what reviews I have due the week of December 26 and nearly had a seizure. What was I thinking? Was I thinking?

I have five reviews slotted for books with publication dates of December 27. Merry Christmas!

Forever and a Day by Delilah Marvelle is the first book in her new Rumor series. I read and enjoyed her Scandal series, so I decided to give this one a try when I saw it on NetGalley.

Like a lot of readers, I’ve never forgotten the thrill of Maria V. Snyder’s first novel, Poison Study. It was marvelous. It was an utterly amazing fantasy romance, and then to find out that it was her first book, I was absolutely floored. But the sequels never quite recaptured that magic. But I keep hoping. Maybe Touch of Power will be the one. I got it from NetGalley in hopes that it will be.

Demon Lover by Juliet Dark sounded like an interesting “story within a story” when I saw it on NetGalley. A female professor at a remote upstate New York college is writing a book titled “The Sex Lives of Demon Lovers.” She thinks it’s folklore, but finds out it’s biography. I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

I found Robin D. Owens’ Enchanted Again irresistible when I spotted in on NetGalley. I love the Celta books. I also enjoyed her Summoning series. Enchanted Again is the second book in her Mystic Circle series, after Enchanted No More, which was fun, but no Celta. We’ll see how this one goes.

I picked up The Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees because of all the buzz about it. And when I say picked up, I mean that literally, I have a print galley from the publisher. I also have a egalley from NetGalley. Does the “so many books, so little time” cliché apply to multiple copies of the same book? It looks like a hybrid of virtual-reality, alternate history, steampunk and cyberpunk. I hope it’s half as wild and cool as the descriptions make it out to be.

From last week’s perils of Marlene, the question is, did I finish anything at all in the middle of packing and moving? The answer is a yes, but not a whole lot.

Unacceptable Risk, absolutely, positively yes. The review will be part of the blog tour post. Not finishing would have been unspeakably rude.

I’m about halfway through One Perfect Night. And it is perfectly the level of mind candy my brain can process in the middle of this moving mess. I expect to finish it and Lady Seductress’ Ball in time to review them early next week.

And speaking of a brain not properly processing, while the boxes have been flying, one of the things that has been randomly firing the synapses is reading challenges. I know, total non sequitur. Nevertheless, I’ll start posting my reading challenge entry posts this week in between everything else. I know I’m going to read the books anyway, so I might as well enter a few challenges for fun.

And I finally finished David Chandler’s Honor Among Thieves. That was so good. It does not have a happy ending. It has the ending it needs to have, but it is not happy. Bittersweet, definitely, but not happy. But excellent. I sat there stunned for several minutes after the last page, just taking it all in.