Tag: 2012 150+ Books Reading Challenge

Silver: Humanotica, Book 1

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

I’m not quite sure where to begin in my review of Silver by Darcy Abriel. This book is book one in her Humanotica series, and I will also be reading and reviewing Haevyn, which is book 2 for Book Lovers Inc.

The thing about Silver is that I’ve never had a book bother me quite so much. On the one hand, it definitely captured my attention. On the other, some of that capture was in the perturbation factor.

Silver is a science fiction romance. I generally like SFR.

Silver takes place in an empire that has probably hit the downward spiral. Think of Rome under the really, really bad emperors, like Tiberius, or Caligula. You know, electing horses to serve in the Senate. Or Star Wars under that fellow we all know and love, the Emperor Palpatine. Remember him? He turned out to be way out there on the Dark Side of the Force.

Decadent empires can give rise (pun possibly intended) to all kinds of disgusting, and manipulative poltical practices. Including the use of sex, and blackmail about sex, as political maneuvering.

Very decadent imperial citizens are often too lazy to work (back to Rome again) so they employ slaves.

In the case of Quentopolis, those slaves are humanotics. Any person with 51% or more cybernetic parts is automatically sold into slavery, if they are caught.

Women are second-class citizens anyway. The reason for this isn’t explained, it just is. But then again, it so frequently isn’t explained, even in real life.

Silver used to be a normal woman, but she was caught pretending to be a man in order to attend a prestigious scientific academy. Her sentence; to become a humanotic and be sold into slavery.

Her new owner, Lel Kesselbaum has a fetish for male humanotics. With cybernetics, this is a complicated but not impossible problem. Lel has this formerly independent woman transformed into a trinex.

What’s a trinex? In this case, female from the waist up, male from the waist down, and more than 51% cybernetic. There are a lot of descriptions of the sexual aspects of Silver’s nature.

But what keeps driving me wacky is the change in Silver’s personality. She was fiercely independent, and now she’s submissive to Kesselbaum’s Dominor. (Dominor being both a political title and a sexual reference in this case).

In male/male romance, there’s a trope named “gay for you”. This story made me wonder if there is a similar trope in BDSM fic called “sub for you”. During the story, Silver discovers she likes to be dominant with other lovers, but not with Kesselbaum. With him, she’s always the submissive, and she loves it that way.

There’s is a slave revolt being planned. Entreus is the leader of that revolt. When he enters the picture, Silver discovers that her master is playing a very long game, and is not quite what he seems.

But there’s never any doubt about what choices she will make.

Escape Rating C-: I found the world fascinating, but I’m very glad that Entreus is the main character for Haevyn. He has more agency, and is in more control of his actions than Silver is.

For more of my thoughts on this book, head on over to Book Lovers Inc.

 

Mako’s Bounty

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

Mako’s Bounty by Diane Dooley is part of Decadent Publishing’s 1 Night Stand series. And that description just about encapsulates the book. The story is about a one-night stand, and it is a decadently delicious little treat of a science fiction romance.

Mako is Makiko Dolan, and she is an intergalactic bounty hunter. With a name like Makiko, and a profession like hers, winding up being nicknamed for the earth-bound shark seems only natural. Especially since Makiko, like the shark she is named for, always puts the bite on her prey.

Her prey in this story is a man named Vin Sainte, who naturally has a nickname of his own: “the Saint,” of course. The Saint is on the run from Ravenscorp, the evil mercantile empire that controls the galaxy, or at least the human-inhabited corner of it.

Mako has been chasing the Saint for months, because she needs the major bounty he’ll bring in. Ravenscorp has been keeping Mako’s mother imprisoned in indentured servitude, and Mako desperately needs a big payday to get her out.

So Mako chases the Saint to Earth. Literally to Earth, as in the planet Earth. She’s arranged a meeting. Not just an ordinary meeting, but a one-night stand arranged through Madame Eve’s exclusive dating agency. Mako’s plan is to sex him up and then handcuff him while he’s still “recovering”.

Mako doesn’t count on the sensory overload she gets from being on Earth for the first time. She’s used to the deprivations of a backwater colony–and the empty vastness of space. Earth is almost an LSD trip.

But Mako’s big surprise is the Saint himself. She’s been studying his picture for months. But in person, he’s, well, she has to admit to herself that he’s the best looking man she’s seen in a long time. The Saint is a major part of that sensory overload.

And even bigger surprise is that he knows exactly who Mako is, and why she’s there. The Saint knows it’s a honey trap. He’s there to bring the little shark over to his own cause.

Until Vin Sainte met Mako, he thought his mission was just to convert the bounty hunter from Ravenscorp’s side to his.

When he finds her naked in his hotel room, he realizes that he needs to convert her to his cause, heart, body and soul.

Escape Rating C+: This story is cute and fun. It’s a very quick and enjoyable dip into the science fiction romance pool.

However, because the story is very short (about 40 pages) there isn’t time to do a lot of worldbuilding, so the science fiction part rides on some assumptions. The beginning has a very good SF feel at the space station, and I loved that one ship was named Gagarin.

But…adjusting to Earth’s gravity wouldn’t be that easy for a lifetime spacer, or I don’t think so.  The mental adjustment, perhaps, but the physical, not so much.

The bigger question for me was Vin Sainte’s religious beliefs. He is a devout practitioner of a religious faith that isn’t named but seems awfully familiar. He certainly prays a lot, and at surprising moments. In a story of this length, inventing a religion would have taken up a lot of worldbuilding time. That being said, assuming that current religions would survive into space relatively unchanged seemed a stretch.

Of course, there’s that scene from the end of the Babylon 5 episode The Parliament of Dreams, where representatives from ALL the Earth’s religions come to the station in 2258. It could happen.

Lust in the Library

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

To commemorate the Public Library Association Conference, which starts today in Philadelphia, let’s talk about Lust in the Library.

Not book lust, although there certainly is a lot of that. Lust in the stacks. Wait, that could still be book lust.

I meant good old-fashioned hanky-panky in the stacks.  And in the librarian’s office.

Lust in the Library is a book by Amelia Fayer, subtitled “An Erotic Novella”. And it definitely is that. But with a title like Lust in the Library it might as well be catnip to librarian (and archivist) erotic romance readers.

Escape Rating C+: This is short, sexy and a whole lot of fun. It’s book/library themed adult mind candy.

Unfortunately, working in a library or archives isn’t anything like the academic library portrayed in this novella. Darn it. So this story carries a consumer warning about not attempting these activities at your local library, especially if you are a member of the staff!

Motor City Mage

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

I’ve enjoyed every trip to magical Detroit so far, and Motor City Mage turned out to be another delightful journey to Cindy Spencer Pape’s paranormal version of Motown.

The mage in Motor City Mage is Desmond Sutton. He’s the representative of the Wyndewin League in Detroit, and a powerful wizard. But the incredibly insular Wyndewin League has a few problems with the way that Sutton represents them in Motown.

Desmond has been mixing with beings from the other magical races, the fae and the werewolves. His sister is married to a fae lord, his niece is half-fae; they’re family! Cutting off his sister just isn’t happening. And his brother-in-law has family of his own, and they’ve married into the local werewolves. More family.

And his new relatives are very effective at helping him manage the demon threat. Some demons have crossed to the earthly dimension and are distributing very potent, and very lethal, drugs to the human population. College kids just see it as a new way of getting high.

But his boss only sees Desmond’s family as dangerous elements. Wyndewin are not supposed to mix with the other magical races or with non-magical humans. They’re supposed to be superior. Desmond is beginning to wonder whether or not its all a load of unicorn pucky, but he also wants to keep his job.

However, there’s a woman that he shouldn’t be interested in. Because Lana is not only not Wyndewin, she’s a werewolf. But she’s the only woman who can stand up to everything he can dish out. And dish it right back. Lana is so wrong for Des, and so very, very right.

That drug problem he’s investigating, Lana not only wants to help, she’s the ideal person to help. She’s a part-time student, and, as a werewolf, she’s got her own built-in set of weaponry if the investigation turns nasty.

But their investigation takes on a dimension that neither of them expects. Literally. Their sting operation on the demon drug distributors sends Des and Lana out of Detroit and into one of the nearby demon dimensions, where they have no one to rely on except each other.

And a demon.

Escape Rating A: Cindy Spencer Pape’s entire Urban Arcana series deserves an A rating. If you enjoy paranormal/urban fantasy romance, just start at the beginning with Motor City Fae and plan on rolling right on through to Motor City Witch, and Motor City Wolf before reaching Motor City Mage. (I loved them all. My review of Motor City Wolf is here)

I just wish it looked like there were more, but Motor City Mage matches up all of the original “cast”. Is it too much to hope for Motor City: the Next Generation?

Hunter’s Prey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

Hunter’s Prey (Bloodhounds, Book 2) by Moira Rogers has all the ingredients to cook up a terrific wild-west romp. Take one former hooker with the requisite heart of gold. Add one former spoiled party-boy who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and feels like he’s been turned into “Beast” from Beauty and the Beast.

Then again, sometimes Hunter literally does turn into a Beast. A Bloodhound, that is.

The Bloodhounds, and the steampunk-flavored post-Civil War alternate Wild West they prowl, were introduced in Wilder’s Mate, book 1 of this series. Not only do a lot of the characters from Wilder’s Mate reappear in Hunter’s Prey, but the first story provides a chunk of useful information about Bloodhounds and their world.

Not to mention, it’s a darn good book!  (See reviews at Fiction Vixen, Book Lovers Inc, Smexy Books, and of course, Reading Reality)

Hunter’s Prey takes up where Wilder’s Mate left off. Hunter was rescued by Wilder, found in a cage in a vampire’s lair. Hunter was changed against his will, and not made by the mysterious Guild.

The story is all about Hunter’s first month of freedom as a bloodhound. Whether he can accept himself as he is now, and not as the man he used to be.

Bloodhounds are ruled by the moon. During the full moon they crave violence. Hunter had no problems dealing with that urge. A camp of 50 or so vampires near the Deadlands border made for easy pickings.

But it’s the insatiable sexual hungers of his Bloodhound nature that Hunter isn’t certain how to handle. Bloodhounds fall prey to three days of mindless lust during the dark of the new moon. Hunter is afraid to inflict the violence of his new nature on any woman, even the prostitutes who make very good money from the Bloodhound Guild every month. They volunteer for this service. The Bloodhounds need to satisfy their lovers, and they are damn good at it.

Even in the short time Hunter has been free, he’s already become attached to a woman, and he didn’t intend to.

Hunter’s Prey isn’t just Hunter’s story, it’s also Ophelia’s story. Ophelia runs the Guildhouse in Iron Creek. She keeps all the Bloodhounds fed, sees to any guests, hires and fires the help. She keeps the pantry stocked. And she listens to everyone’s troubles. Ophelia used to run a bordello. Except for the nature of the business, running a Guildhouse isn’t much different. She’s tired of managing other people’s houses and other people’s lives. Ophelia wants a place of her own.

But Hunter is just the kind of trouble that draws her in. Ophelia knows she shouldn’t get involved with him. Not because he’s a Bloodhound, but because he isn’t ready to accept that his dreams of a respectable life are over. Bloodhounds aren’t respectable, they are violence incarnate.

However rationally Ophelia decides that she shouldn’t be involved with Hunter, fate has other plans. So do a whole bunch of ghouls and a vampire drug lord.

With the deck stacked so high against them, will Hunter and Ophelia survive long enough to find out that they belong together?

Escape Rating B: Even though Hunter is the title character, Ophelia is the person who really made the story work for me. I could understand completely why she felt the way she did, both about running the house, and why she was thinking of leaving.

And I could definitely see her misgivings about a relationship with Hunter. Until he accepts who he is now, there’s no future. He has to stop looking backward at who he was, and accept himself for who he is now, however that came about. I do love watching a relationship build; the chase should be every bit as much fun to watch as the catch. This was scorching.

I did find myself going back to see where the villain went. The ending was fast and furious, but we didn’t see a whole lot of the bad guy before the take down. On the other hand, I did like the hints that the Guild is going to feature more in later books. They are infernally and internally mysterious. I want to know more about them, so I’m looking forward to that!

 

Peacemaker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Peacemaker is the third book in Lindsay Buroker’s Flash Gold Chronicles. When I finished the last page, I was already pining for book four. I hope I don’t have too long to wait for the next episode in these steampunk adventures of a self-taught tinkerer and her bounty hunter business partner.

Kali and Cedar are tremendous fun. Especially because the scrapes Kali gets into (and gets herself out of) read like a Girl’s Own Adventure version of the Perils of Pauline. Or maybe more like “Dudley Do-right and Snidely Whiplash”? But in Ms. Buroker’s tales, Kali McAlister never waits for any man to rescue her, and her partner Cedar is much, much smarter than Dudley ever hoped to be.

Cedar needs to be smarter if he’s ever going to have half a chance with Kali. But there are Mounties hanging around. Peacemaker takes place in Dawson City, Yukon during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush.

During the Gold Rush era, “Peacemaker” was a nickname for a Colt Single Action Revolver.    Between 1949 and 1959, “Peacemaker” was also the nickname for the Convair B-36 strategic bomber. In this steampunk wild west where airship pirates steal gold from men who shoot back with six-shooters, both nicknames turn out to be strangely apropos.

Dawson was a dangerous place. All Gold Rush towns were. But Dawson is particularly dangerous for Kali and Cedar.

There’s a serial killer on the loose. He’s targeting Native girls, and he doesn’t just kill them. He tortures and rapes them first. Then he butchers them. Jack the Ripper might have been the killer’s teacher, or his student.

The worst part is he’s trying to lay the blame on either the Natives, or animals, or superstitious nonsense. In any case, he escapes clean every time. Finding out just how he does it is a big part of the story.

The absolutely worst part is that the crimes appear to be the work of the same serial killer who struck in San Francisco just before Cedar left–the crimes that Cedar was accused of. There’s a Pinkerton agent on Cedar’s trail, and he’s come to Dawson to get his man.

Cedar isn’t the murderer. But the murderer is tracking Cedar, knowing he can lay the blame at Cedar’s door. And Kali is half-Native. Adding her to the body count will serve two purposes; it will hurt Cedar, and it will make him look even more guilty. After all, that’s how it worked in San Francisco. The last victim there was someone Cedar cared about, too.

About that bomber: Kali wants an airship. Attempting to get her hands on one lands her, and everyone around her, in all sorts of trouble. Read the book and find out how she gets herself out.

Escape Rating A: I was happy that Peacemaker was a bit longer than Flash Gold and Hunted, because I didn’t want it to be over. I really like Kali as a character, and I didn’t want to let her go.

We see more of her background in Peacemaker, and she’s come a long way. Kali is a child of two worlds, and feels like she doesn’t belong in either one. Seeing that she has made a way for herself that takes the best of both makes her a truly interesting character.

I do hope that someday Kali and Cedar get a happy ending. These are not romances, so that’s not part of the story. But these are two people who have had some rough times, and as a reader, you hope they get rewarded. They’re just good together.

 

Hunted

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Hunted is the second book in Lindsay Buroker’s Flash Gold Chronicles. If you like western-themed steampunk, you’ll love the Flash Gold Chronicles. Start with the first story, Flash Gold (reviewed here) and just keep right on reading. You’ll be glad you did.

Hunted picks right up where Flash Gold left off. So there will be some spoilers for Flash Gold in this review. (It’s difficult to review book 2 of a series without spoiling book 1 a tiny bit!)

Kali and Cedar are business partners. But not partners of any other kind. However, when Kali’s low-down, no-good con man of an ex-fiancé strolls into her tinkering shop, Kali pretends that Cedar is her beau. She’s just so incensed that Sebastian believes that no man could possibly be interested in her unless he was after her dwindling supply of her father’s flash gold.

There turn out to be three problems with her deception of Sebastian as to the nature of her partnership with Cedar.

Problem number one: Sebastian has a job for her, a real one. He’s planning to prospect for gold out and he wants her to come out and handle the engineering. She needs the money for parts for her airship.

Problem number two: her business partner Cedar not only wants her to take that job, he wants to come along with her. He needs the excuse to go out to the goldfields. Cedar is a bounty hunter, and the bounty he is hunting is rumored to be on the next claim over from Sebastian’s.

Problem number three: while Cedar was standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her, pretending to be not just protective, but downright enamored of her, Kali discovered that she liked the feeling far too much. Pretending to be engaged might upset the balance of their relationship in ways she hadn’t expected.

And with Kali’s luck, once she and Cedar arrived at Sebastian’s gold claim, the entire situation immediately went from bad to worse. The only gold Sebastian was after turned out to be the bounty on Kali’s head!

Escape Rating A-: The Flash Gold Chronicles are simply way too much fun. Kali’s endless inventiveness, her positive lust for all things mechanical, is an absolute delight. Every time some new engineering marvel takes pot shots at her, she’s every bit as interested in seeing how it ticks as she is in shooting it down. Kali is a character I’d love to meet.

I’ve already started Peacemaker, the third book in the Flash Gold Chronicles. I’m delighted to be spending more time with Kali and Cedar.

 

Flash Gold

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Flash Gold by Lindsay Buroker is the first story in her Flash Gold Chronicles. What are those, I hear you asking? They are an absolutely marvelous series of western-style steampunk-flavored romps set in a gold rush-era Yukon featuring a terrifically inventive heroine, Kali McAlister.

In other words, it’s fun!

Kali McAllister plans to enter her “dogless sled” in a mushing race, all so she can win the $1000 prize and leave the Yukon in general and the town of Moose Hollow in particular, forever.

Kali is an inventor. Her dogless sled runs on steampower and mechanical engineering trickery. Most of the folks around Moose Hollow believe she’s a witch. They’re wrong.

Kali’s mother was a witch. Well, a pretty powerful medicine woman of the local Han tribe, anyway. And her father, well, he was the closest thing to a wizard that this world is likely to see for a while.

And he invented “flash gold”. Gold flakes that go “BOOM” like gunpowder or TNT, only more stable, and way more valuable.  The really neat thing about flash gold is that it obeys instructions like the punch cards on a jacquard loom, but way easier. Flash gold accepts verbal instructions.

The world’s last known supply of was her father’s legacy to Kali. But Kali’s trying to keep that fact very, very quiet. She has enough problems with the idiots in town who want to sabotage her sled.

So when a big, sword-toting stranger comes to town and wants to hire on as her guard for the race, Kali is pretty skeptical. But she needs a guard. It’s just that this man who calls himself “Cedar” is too expensively equipped for someone willing to work for just the promise of wages.

And that’s when Kali discovers that  every nefarious no-good varmint in the Yukon and Northwest Territories seems to be hunting her for her father’s flash gold. And that Cedar is hunting all of them!

Escape Rating A-: I read this twice. I requested a review copy from the author, and read and really enjoyed it. But I didn’t get the review written. The third book in the Flash Gold Chronicles just came out (Hunted is #2, and Peacemaker is #3) and I decided it was time to write the review. I roared through Flash Gold again, and it was just as much fun the second time through.

A reader can’t ask for better than that!

Blue Monday

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

“Blue Monday”, according to some very shaky pseudoscience, is the most depressing day of the year.

Which makes Blue Monday a fitting title for the first book in Nicci French’s new mystery series. Psychotherapist Frieda Klein features as the reader’s guide into the darker recesses into the human mind.

Frieda’s first “case” delves into dark places, indeed. Because this mystery is a case about lost people. Not just the initial tragedy of a missing child that opens the story, but all of the characters in this multi-act tragedy have lost essential pieces of themselves.

Including the psychotherapists who are supposed to guide their patients out of the depths. And the deeper this case goes, the murkier it gets. But it is enthralling until long after the last page is turned.

It all starts with a lost child. Twenty years ago, Joanna Vine disappeared on her way home from school. Her sister Rose lost track of her for just a couple of minutes, and little Jo vanished. Joanna was five years old. Rose Vine was only nine.

Joanna was never found. Not the child, not her body. Rose never stopped blaming herself for that one moment of childish selfishness.

The Vine’s marriage didn’t survive the tragedy. Richard Vine drank too much. Deborah Vine remarried and tried to move on.

Then a little boy disappeared, under almost identical circumstances, over twenty years later. But serial criminals don’t usually wait that long. Two doesn’t make a serial anything. But there is no other child snatching like these two, not in the long intervening years.

And psychotherapist Frieda Klein has a new patient. A patient who came to her before the boy, Matthew Faraday, was kidnapped. Frieda’s new patient described seeing a little boy just like Matthew waiting for him and imagined a little boy just like Matthew being his son.

Is Frieda’s patient, Alan Dekker, the kidnapper? This time? He’s not Joanna’s snatcher since he was a child then himself. But does he know something?

Frieda’s investigation into Alan Dekker’s lost boy unearths the lost, lonely, abandoned child that Alan Dekker used to be. A child who never knew Joanna Vine then, and doesn’t know anything about Matthew Faraday now.

But Alan’s lost history is the key to everything. If it doesn’t destroy him first.

Escape Rating A: This is a psychological thriller, and it is excellent. It also has one of those endings that twists at the very, very last second in a very neat and creepy/spine-tingling way.

The characters in this drama are fascinating. The story starts out as a tragedy with the lost child. But every single person has lost something important. There is a major theme about the loss of identity, and about adult children with major pieces of their identities missing. But even the supposedly “whole” people have major gaps in their lives and are patching over them as part of the story.

If you enjoy psychological thrillers with darker edges, read this one on a sunny day!

 

 

Heart of Perdition

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Heart of Perdition by Selah March is a short, chilling gothic story. And I do mean chilling. The ending was very eerie, and I got the shivers. Not from cold, but from the creepy-crawlies. In a good way.

Heart of Perdition takes place in a steampunk-style world, but the story isn’t steampunk, and that doesn’t matter. Steampunk can be a setting, just as an alien planet or near-future apocalypse can be a setting, while the story is another genre entirely. That’s how we sometimes get genre-benders like futuristic romance or historical mysteries.

So the steampunk setting of Perdition allows the use of airships and clockwork servants, but doesn’t drive the story. What drives the story is an ancient evil creature named Xaphan, and a terrible curse embodied by one lonely young woman.

Elspeth Shaw lives alone on the Greek island of St. Kilda. It’s a very bleak island, and it’s better that way. Elspeth suffers from a terrible curse. Every living creature who becomes emotionally attached to her, dies. Every creature, not just humans. Elspeth can’t even have a pet without watching it die horribly of her curse.

Elspeth only allows herself one human servant, a housekeeper whom she pays well and treats just barely tolerably, guaranteeing that the woman never forms any attachment to her. It’s her only way of keeping the woman alive. All of her other servants are automata.

Poor Elspeth’s own feelings don’t enter into the curse, she can love anyone she likes. Or not. What matters what they feel about her.

The curse is the result of an evil bargain her father made the night she was born. Her father tried to cheat death. To do so, he stole a powerful artifact that had been safeguarded by a church. That artifact controlled an evil spirit named Xaphan. The bargain her father made was that the curse would be visited on his first-born child. Elspeth’s father assumed his first-born would be a son. He was an egotistical scientist in the Victorian era, he was like that. Instead, his firstborn was Elspeth.

Her father was not killed by the curse because he never loved her. He lived a normal life-span.

But as he died, an old bitter man, he decided upon one last act of horror. Dr. Shaw died in the house of James Weston, Earl of Falmouth. Weston was a young man dying of congenital heart disease. Contemporary physicians could recognize it, but not cure it.

With his dying breath, Dr. Shaw directed Weston to go to Elspeth, and to release Xaphan. Knowing the evil would grant the dying young man his wish of restored life, at the cost of releasing that terrible evil back into the world.

The inevitable result is tragic and horrible and incredibly chilling.

Escape Rating B+: I recommend Heart of Perdition if you like your romances with a side of eerie. You will gobble this story right up–but don’t gobble this one up alone in the dark with your ereader. The ending haunts.