Tag: 2012 Ebook Challenge

Undercover Alliance

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

One of the neat things about genres like science fiction romance is that the author gets to use the science fiction part of the blend to “play” with or comment on some of the aspects of the human experience from a slightly different perspective.

Undercover Alliance by Lilly Cain lives up to its claim of being erotic science fiction romance. And it does a very good job of it, too!

But the alien race in her Confederacy Treaty series, the Inarrii, are not merely empathic, they literally require sexual healing as a means of processing tension and staying sane. Their bodies, although very similar to humans. are covering in l’inar, lines of nerve endings that convey and express pleasure, pain, stress and every emotion.

Undercover Alliance is the story of an Inarrii woman, a warrior named Sarina. Her l’inar were permanently damaged in battle, but she survived. However, with her l’inar severed, everyone believes that she will eventually lose her sanity, because she cannot achieve the full mind-contact and sexual release that is needed for an Inarrii to de-stress and remain sane.

Sarina thinks she’d be fine if she could just keep working. She’s a trained warrior. She thinks if she keeps doing her job, eventually a battle will solve the problem for her. The enemy won’t mind if she’s damaged goods.

But her own people are afraid that she’ll go berserk and don’t trust her in a combat company. So they assign her as a bodyguard to a low-status human during the final stages of the Human-Confederacy Alliance treaty negotiations — while they wait for her to crack.

The only problem is that her supposedly low-status human charge isn’t. He’s an undercover Spaceforce Security agent sent to make sure that the treaty does get signed. There are both human terrorists and alien Raveners out to break the alliance before it begins.

And John Norton absolutely hates pretending to be a bureaucrat. But not quite as much as he hates having to even let it look like he’s letting someone else handle his security. He’s used to working strictly alone. No partners.

It’s only in the silence of his own mind that he can think about how much he really wants to be in charge of everything…including his strong and beautiful bodyguard. It astonishes, and delights him, when she reads his thoughts enough to decide that maybe they can try being in charge of each other. Or take turns. Or all of the above.

Then someone tries to blow up their section of the ship. And only their section of the ship. Along with John’s cover story. While they are fleeing from marauders and fighting for their lives, John and Sarina discover that the moments between life and death are a great time to reach past the broken places for something wonderful.

They’re just not sure if they can hang on once the shooting stops.

Escape Rating B+: Undercover Alliance is the third book in Cain’s Confederacy Treaty series, after Alien Revealed and The Naked Truth. The series keeps getting better.

Undercover Alliance reveals a bit more of the world behind the story, and I enjoy seeing how they get where they are. Unfortunately, not everyone on Earth would welcome an alliance. There would be terrorists, damn it. Whatever we do, someone is always against it.

The Raveners remind me a bit of the Reavers from Firefly. I don’t think they’re that bad, but the name is close. There are always the good guys and the bad guys. And politics. Undercover Alliance has the political story in the background, making sure the treaty gets signed.

We also see that the Inarrii are just different from humans. Some of those differences are physical, not just the l’inar, but also that they are stronger, see better in low light, have better hearing. But also their society works differently. And it should. They aren’t human.

I hope there are more books in this universe. I want to see what happens next. Now that the treaty is signed, do the Raveners come in force?

 

City of the Gods: The Descendant

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

Maybe the Mayan calendar is right, and the world really is coming to an end. They just had the date a bit off. And things aren’t quite hopeless, or there wouldn’t be a story in it.

One other tiny detail, the ancient civilization involved wasn’t the Mayans, it was the Aztecs. But there’s still the whole “end of the world” deal. Except that in this case, there is one person, a Redeemer, who can prevent it. If she’s not stopped.

And the forces of evil definitely pull out all the stops trying to keep the Redeemer from fulfilling her mission. Even before she finds out she has one.

Katalina is that Redeemer. But she doesn’t know. Of course she doesn’t, because the story of The Descendant is Katalina’s journey.

The story begins with Kat at a crossroads. This is not an uncommon beginning for a hero’s (or heroine’s) journey. Not only has Kat just been fired, she came home to find her fiancé moving out of their apartment, with the help of his new girlfriend. Heated words were exchanged.

But when Kat meets her best friends at their neighborhood hangout, everything changes. First, it turns out that her BFFs are not quite what they seem. Sabine and Vivian are Kat’s bodyguards, although Kat doesn’t know that yet. Second, the club has gone upscale in the last week, and the new owner turns out to be hot for Kat.

And third, Kat goes out into the alley to get some fresh air after running into her recent ex — and her split personality evil side kills two drunks who try to rape her. Yes, you read that right. Kat has multiple personality disorder, and her dark side, a nasty piece-of-work named Lina, takes over whenever Kat can’t handle things. Drunken rapists definitely qualified.

Kat created Lina when she watched her parents die in an auto accident. Lina has nothing to do with being the Redeemer. At least not yet.

But the evil dude who watches the drunks attack her does. He’s the sworn enemy of Vivian and Sabine. His name is Damien. Once upon a time, he used to be Vivian’s fiance. Back in Teotihaucan.

Damien has been chasing the Redeemer forever, waiting for her to be born. Vivian and Sabine have been watching forever, waiting for the Redeemer to be born. Tristan, the new owner of the club, is Vivian’s brother. He has been hunting for the Redeemer for his entire life, waiting for her to be born. They’ve all been waiting since 700 A.D. Just for Kat.

Kat doesn’t want any of this. She wanted the life she had. But like the Rolling Stones said, we can’t always get what we want. Kat and Tristan are going to have to try very, very hard to get what they need.

Escape Rating B: This could have been a standard paranormal romance, but the author took some twists that definitely made it more interesting.

Choosing the Aztecs as the forebears for this history was a brave choice. The author doesn’t gloss over their historic practices of animal and human sacrifice, nor Kat’s revulsion toward them. Her job is to save the world in the present, not correct the past.

Kat’s psychological response to witnessing her parents’ death was to create a secondary personality, Lina, to handle the hard stuff in her life. Lina is a bad-ass. Re-integrating Lina into Kat becomes a necessary part of Kat’s journey to becoming the Redeemer. Still, that initial scene where Lina emerges was a WOW! The reader isn’t sure whether Lina is the Redeemer, whether she’s evil, or whether she needs to be exorcised.

Although Kat is very attracted to Tristan, she loses her faith in him, and all her friends, when she discovers how much they have concealed from her over the years. No matter how justified that concealment, Kat should lose faith. Talk a about a whopping big set of lies.

On the other hand, I didn’t get Damien’s initial motivation for turning to “the Dark Side”. He definitely was evil, but why it happened in the first place, all those years ago, wasn’t quite clear to me. He turned “bad” because the truly evil dude wasn’t punished enough? He betrayed his friends and his entire belief system for that?

I’ll need a better explanation, or a bigger evil, in book 2. But I definitely want a book 2!

Dead Sexy: Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> Book Lovers Inc.> book reviews

Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies by Cynthia Cooke is the very first book in Entangled Publishing’s new Dead Sexy romantic suspense imprint.

It turned out to be a great opening act for the new line, because DSLL is definitely a very sexy and suspenseful story. And considering the plot of spies, conspiracy theories and secrets-gone-wrong, the heroine and her hero leave a whole cemetery-full of dead bad-guys along the way to their, well, let’s not spoil things, shall we?

I don’t want to ruin the suspense.

Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies starts out with all its guns blazing. Genie Marsters is on the run from the men in black. Not those men in black, just thugs in suits. They might be government agents sent to bring her in. Or they might be worse bad guys than that.

Her old agency (the National Counter Terrorism Agency) might be compromised. But other people might be out to get her and her sisters because they are fully-functioning empaths. Genie trusts no one except her father. And he’s just gone underground. Even further under the radar than his normal paranoia.

When the worse guys (not the NCTA) send a team to capture her, the NCTA sends someone to bring her in from the cold. They may not trust her, but they don’t want her kidnapped. The NCTA sends her ex-partner, and ex-lover, Kyle Montgomery.

Kyle doesn’t trust her either, but his sense of personal betrayal hurts a lot more. He doesn’t know she’s an empath. He does know she didn’t come to the hospital after their last op nearly killed him. He saved her life, and she might be the cause of whatever happened. Or her sister was. Kyle didn’t even know she had a sister.

Talk about deadly secrets. Genie’s sister was involved with the bad guys. And she might still be. Or she might be dead. Becca is supposed to be dead.

But who’s out to kidnap Genie and her sister Cat? And why?

And why does Kyle feel like he and Genie are still a team? After everything she didn’t tell him, after all the lies she told him, he shouldn’t still love her. But he does.

The question is whether he can trust her, ever again. Especially since Genie Marsters has been taught, her whole life, never to trust anyone. Not even herself.

Escape Rating B+: Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies would make a terrific romantic suspense movie. It grabs you up in that first scene, and doesn’t let you go until the end. The pace is wild and crazy and totally non-stop.

And it probably needs to be that fast, because the government conspiracy at the heart of the bad guy’s insanity doesn’t quite hold up if you look at it too closely. But the story is moving so fast, that you don’t get a chance to. You’re swept up in the action.

The sibling rivalry between the three Marsters sisters is off the charts. I’m an only child, and they make me grateful for it.

The ending of DSLL definitely sets up for the next book in the series, and I’m glad of it. I want to know what happens next to these people. They’re wild and crazy and I’m compelled to read the next installment.

For more of my thoughts on Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies, head on over to Book Lovers Inc.

But back to next installments, Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies is just the first of the Dead Sexy line. I’m looking forward to a continuing line of sexy stories starring deadly lovers.

Kiss of the Goblin Prince

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> Book Lovers Inc.> book reviews

Kiss of the Goblin Prince by Shona Husk is a story about second chances. And third chances. And twentieth chances. On the one hand, it’s about realizing that we only have a short time at this life, and that we have to make the most of it. And at the very same time, it’s a story about that classic conundrum that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Literally, life after life, whether the person remembers those other lives or not. The soul remembers.

Amanda watches her sister-in-law marry a man that she barely knows, and wonders how Eliza could turn her life around so fast. Not that Roan isn’t a major improvement over the now-residing-in-jail Steve. But Eliza and Roan haven’t even known each other long enough to file the 30 days paperwork to make this wedding legal.

Amanda is a widow with a young daughter, a daughter with a fatal disease. A daughter whose father died before she was born. She was a wife for a year, and has been a widow for seven. She’s poured all her energy into taking care of her daughter, Brigit. Watching as severe asthma steals more and more of Brigit’s lungs every time she has an attack.

But in that church, watching Eliza marry Roan, she finds herself watching Roan’s brother, Dai. And feeling things she hasn’t felt in years. And isn’t any too comfortable with.

Dai is no more sure of himself than Amanda. Roan and Dai spent almost 2,000 years under a curse. They were goblins. Slowly, slowly losing their souls to the lust for gold, cursed by a Druid priest during the Roman occupation of Wales for leading a failed rebellion.

Eliza’s love for Roan cured the curse. Roan was the King, and curing him, cured Dai as well. But they were the only ones left in their band of warriors to survive the ages. And Dai, well sometimes, he’s not so sure he came all the way back. In nightmares, he’s still in the Shadowlands, still a goblin.

What he feels for Amanda, he’s afraid to pursue. He spent those centuries researching their curse, researching magic. He’s bargained away parts of his soul, many times over. Those vows still bind him. And in the human lands, he discovers that he can practice real magic. Magic that has not been seen since the Druids that cursed them died out.

With his newfound magic he learns much that surprises him about the modern world. He can see connections between people. He can see disease, even though he doesn’t know how to cure it. He can actually see the growing attraction that runs between himself and Amanda.

And he can see the reason why he, Amanda and her daughter Brigit were brought together. In a previous life, Brigit was his sister. He couldn’t save her then, but now, he feels that he must try, no matter what it costs him.

Even if he has to tell Amanda the truth, and he loses her. The only woman he has ever loved.

Escape Rating A: This story was complex, and it really drew me in. It kept going deeper and deeper as it went. On the surface it seemed straightforward enough. Eliza and Roan get married (after The Goblin King) and now it’s Dai’s turn.

But not simple at all. Dai is much more tortured, not just by the past, but by everything he studied. All those magic rituals and vows, one on top of another. He’s been a scholar for centuries! All those secrets, and no one to ever tell. Starting with the biggest secret of all.

Amanda has been hurting too. She feels like she can never do enough for her daughter, and she’s fighting a battle she can’t win. Eventually she’s going to be left alone. But all her energies are focused on taking care of Brigit.

Putting these two tormented people together made for one amazing story.

For more of my thoughts on this book, take a look at Book Lovers Inc.

The Goblin King

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

Goblins are not the stuff that dreams are made of. Not unless those dreams are nightmares.

But somehow Shona Husk managed to make The Goblin King into a sweeping romance of love and redemption as well as a darkly sensual twist on Beauty and the Beast.

Once upon a time, Roan was a Celtic prince, back when Rome ruled the Western world. Back when the Druids practiced real magic. His people rebelled, and failed. Roan and his band of warriors were condemned, not to death, because death would have been too quick, but to eternity in the Shadowlands. Eternity as goblins.

Their punishment didn’t come from the Romans for the attempt, it came from a Druid priest for betraying the rebellion. The worst of it was, Roan and his men weren’t even guilty.

But the Druid could never admit his mistake, so the punishment continued, century after century, as one by one, Roan’s men fell to the curse. Either their souls were eaten away by the goblin’s lust for gold, or they died in fighting the goblin horde.

Roan was King of his band of goblin-men. Being a goblin meant that any human could summon him to the Fixed Realm that we call Earth. Roan had to obey the summons, but he learned that he didn’t have to obey the summoner, not if he was willing to endure a little pain.

One 20th century summer, a girl on the cusp of womanhood summoned him, to rescue her from her brother’s drunken friends. Eliza thought the Goblin King would serve her better than rape by drunken teenage boys. She turned out to be right.

Years later, faced with a fiance who has both stolen from her and brutalized her, Eliza choses to summon the Goblin King again. A goblin who is what he is has to be better than a goblin who pretends to be a man.

Roan almost doesn’t remember her. The goblin curse almost has him, but not quite. And Eliza brings him back from the brink of the darkness. Except that time is running out. Roan’s kingdom in the Shadowlands is about to be physically overrun by goblins. Roan and his brother Dai are the only two warriors left, and even the magical defenses he has created have limits.

Eliza is his queen, but unless she can break his curse, he cannot return to the Fixed Realm, to Earth. If she stays in the Shadowlands, she will die with him. If she returns to her own place, her conniving fiancee will ruin her, or possibly worse.

The Druid priest wants to destroy everything Roan holds dear, including Eliza. Can they find the answer before it is too late?

Escape Rating A-: Making a goblin the hero was a stroke of genius. Absolutely brilliant. He’s a piece of mythology you don’t see used much, and certainly don’t imagine in the hero role. Yes, it’s a take-off on Beauty and the Beast, so what? West Side Story was Romeo and Juliet. The point is that it’s well done.

I always like it when the hero and heroine (or hero and hero) rescue each other. He doesn’t just sweep her off of her feet. He needs to be rescued every bit as much as she does. It’s not one-sided.

My only teeny-tiny wish is that the evil fiance, Steve, hadn’t been quite so cookie-cutter dastardly. In a story where all the other characters were multi-dimensional, his one-dimensional-ness stood out. So to speak.

The story of Roan’s first meeting with Eliza, where she summons him to rescue her from her brother’s drunken friends, is appropriately titled The Summons. It’s a prequel enovella and is currently available free. At that price it is definitely worth reading!

Blood and Bullets

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

I was jonesing for a Harry Dresden fix, and somebody mentioned Deacon Chalk might be just the man to tide me over. Whoever that was, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now you’re wondering who the hell Deacon Chalk might be. Notice I didn’t say heck. Deacon Chalk would never be that mealy-mouthed.

Deacon Chalk is the monster-hunting main character of Blood and Bullets, the first novel by James R. Tuck in the urban fantasy series that is, of course, named after its protagonist. Deacon Chalk, Occult Bounty Hunter, that’s him.

There’s also a prequel novella, That Thing at the Zoo, which serves as a fantastic (fantastic in multiple senses of the term) introduction to the series and the characters.

Deacon hunts vampires, and pretty much everything else that goes bump in the night. Vamps murdered his family, and his mission in life is to stop the evil basty-assed-nastards from murdering as many other families as he possibly can.

He runs his monster-bounty-hunting business from the back of an expressway-exit strip-club. And every single one of the strippers is one of his assistants. Because they’ve all been victimized by the vamps at some point, and this is their way of getting some of their own back.

His sidekick is a Catholic priest, who also provides all the Holy Water Deacon needs for putting down the vamps. And is very handy with a rifle.

In Blood and Bullets, a lot of both fly around. Because an ancient vampire (there are ancient vampires and convoluted vampire politics in some of the best urban fantasy series) has set up Deacon, another vampire hunter, and one of her own vampires who got away from her(!) in a very nasty little war.

Of course she wants them to wipe each other out and save her the trouble. Or does she have a much deeper game? She’s a vampire after all. They always seem to be playing on twenty levels at once, all of them foul and blood-soaked.

This time, there’s more at stake than Deacon ever imagined. Even though he is literally on the side of the Angels.

Escape Rating A: Blood and Bullets is delicious in that “OMG please tell me there are more” kind of way. There’s a manic “Vampire Chainsaw Massacre” element that is just so much fun, but wouldn’t work in another genre. The vampires are unrelievedly evil, and you so want Deacon to plow them down without remorse, which he does.

I’ve never read another book that gets into the mechanics of vampire-slaughter in quite this much detail, and made it fun, but Blood and Bullets does it. The snark-fest aspects help tremendously!

Urban fantasy reads differently with a male protagonist, back to my comparison to Harry Dresden. Harry doesn’t finesse things, he sets them on fire. Deacon doesn’t either, he mows them down. They are also both big men who cast very long shadows, not just physically but also symbolically.

Start reading about Deacon Chalk with That Thing at the Zoo. It’s ebook only and definitely worth the 99 cents. Deacon’s adventures continue this summer in another ebook novella, Spider’s Lullaby, and later with Blood and Silver in August. I’m glad it’s not a long wait. I want to see what happens next!

 

About Last Night

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

About Last Night by Ruthie Knox is an absolute gem of a love story.

Mary Catherine Talarico has been “Good Cath” for two years. She left her last mistake behind, burned her last bridge (pretty much literally) and kept herself focused on her work.

And what a job it is. She’s the assistant to a curator at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It’s a job Cath sort of created for herself, making herself indispensable during the creation of an exhibition and catalog devoted to the history of knitting as folk art, Cath’s favorite subject.

But in order to keep “Bad Cath” safely locked away, Cath hasn’t had a social life in those two years. Her personal life has become so boring and predictable that one morning she bets her boss that she can accurately predict the next several commuters to get off the bus at the V&A stop.

The stakes of that bet? Her boss will bring in a hand-knitted straight-jacket. Great item for the exhibit. The good news, Cath wins the bet. The bad news, Cath wins the bet. Her life is officially that boring.

Except that one of those commuters is a man Cath has nicknamed “City” for his gorgeous bespoke City-banker type suits. Not that the man wearing the suits is half-bad either. Cath also sees him most mornings when they take the same running trails, and he’s pretty good to look at in just running shorts and a sweaty t-shirt, too.

But he’s just a fantasy man. “Good Cath” doesn’t have the time or energy to chase inappropriate men. That’s “Bad Cath’s” territory.

Until one night, when a friend fixes Cath up on a blind date. That should have been nixed from the start. It was a disaster of epic proportions. Unfortunately for Cath, the bad date was the kind who insisted that she must have a drink with him, unless she was too good to drink with him, and it was too early for her to bail. One drink let “Bad Cath” out.

The end of the evening found Cath drunk in a bus stop, too broke for cab fare (the V&A doesn’t pay much) when “City” stopped and recognized her. “Bad Cath” doesn’t have any inhibitions about inappropriate men, but does have commitment issues. And “City” turned out to want to rescue the pretty woman he remembers from the bus. So he takes her home with him, since she refuses to say where she lives.

After one glorious night, Cath wakes up and realizes that she has just made a horrible mistake. Admittedly a mistake involving some really, really terrific sex with a gorgeous man she’s always fancied.

At first, Cath doesn’t even want to know “City’s” real name. (It’s Nev). She’s not sure she wants to see him again. She thinks the last night was a mistake, and she just wants to put it behind her.

Nev definitely wants to see Cath again. And again. And not just for the great sex. He’s pretty sure she’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

But the fact that she’s exactly the opposite of anyone his family might want him to be involved with really does confuse the issue. His family is positive he’s making a mistake.

Just whose mistake is this, anyway?

Escape Rating A: This is a tremendously fun contemporary romance. If you like contemporary at all, even once in a while, go get this book!

The story uses the “sex into love” plot, and does it very, very well. That’s a story that doesn’t always work so well in real life, but the author makes it work in the story because there is still definitely a courtship, even though it happens after they fall into bed.

Nev has to court Cath because he wants more from the relationship, and he needs to get Cath to trust him in order to get that more. It’s not a traditional courtship by any means, but it does definitely explore the characters, and the readers get to know how they got to the place the story began, where they make that first so-called mistake.

Delighting In Your Company

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

If the phrase “delighting in your company” sounds familiar, it should. It’s from one of the most persistent ballads in the English language. Still stumped?

It’s Greensleeves.

And the story, Delighting in Your Company, uses the tune and the words, as it is one song that is familiar to people in both the 19th and 21st centuries.

That’s important, because Blair McDowell has created a ghost story and a time-travel story that links people and events between those two centuries.

Ms McDowell interweaves the history and beliefs of the Caribbean, a stinging rebuke against the “Triangle Trade” of the 17th and 18th centuries, and a bittersweet love story that changes history. Because history needed a “cosmic kick in the pants”.

But first, the heroine needs a more localized one. Amalie Ansett’s life needs a do-over. Or at least a fresh start. Her marriage has ended in bitter divorce, and her beloved mother is dead. While packing her her childhood home, she discovers a family secret–the good kind for a change. She has family she never knew about. A cousin in the Caribbean, on the laid-back island of St. Clement’s.

One delighted phone call, and Amalie is taking a much-needed rest on a sleepy tropical island where the pace is life is slow, and time has a chance to heal her.

The one thing she doesn’t expect to find is a man. The other thing she doesn’t expect to find is a mystery.

Long ago, there was another Amalie Ansett. Her portrait hangs in the museum. And she’s a dead-ringer for 21st century Amalie. There’s something else dead about historic Amalie. Her eyes. They’re empty. Not just in the sense that the portrait was bad, but as though the artist painted her corpse.

He did. History-Amalie was catatonic while she was painted, while she was the governor’s wife. There’s a big mystery about her death. And Amalie’s cousin Julia knows it. Something went very wrong back there in the past.

Because that man Amalie has met in the here-and-now? He’s a ghost. Everyone on the island knows something haunts the old Ansett and Evans Plantations, and it’s him. Jonathan Evans. The man the original Amalie was supposed to marry.

Instead there was a slave rebellion, and history went way, way, way off track. Jonathan’s ghost thinks his Amalie has come back to him. Amalie thinks that her handsome ghost-man is using her as a substitute for the woman he really loves.

But he’s real enough to her that they manage pretty well. Until Amalie investigates that rebellion-and figures out that she might be able to go back and fix things. But if she makes things right, she’ll lose the man she loves.

Love is about making the one you love happy, not yourself, isn’t it? No matter how much it hurts?

Escape Rating A-: Usually it’s either the ghost story or the time-travel story. This time it’s both, and it SO works. Amalie has to meet the ghost of Jonathan in order to know she’s supposed to go back and fix things. And yes, it might be a little arrogant to think she’s the one who has to fix the past, but who else?

The story works on a lot of levels, the love story because Amalie knows it can’t last, but does it anyway. She’s always trying to make things right for Jonathan, aware that it’s a sacrifice for the greater good. But it only works when she builds trust with people in both the present and the past, especially her past self. That was fascinating.

The time travel angle works because Amalie goes back to herself. She’s not trying to create a new role, she’s already there. She works with what is.

The historic mystery has its roots in the Triangle Trade, and the money to be made there. Not just the slave trade itself, but also the sales of the cash crop from the Caribbean that the slaves produced. If you’re curious about the Triangle Trade, the best, and most colorful description is still the song “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” from the musical 1776. It indicts everyone involved.

Succubus Lost

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

The first succubus that Detective Marisol Whitman of the Chicago P.D. “freak squad”  knows is lost in Succubus Lost by Tiffany Allee is unfortunately one who is very near and dear to her. Marisol goes to her sister Elaine’s room to wake her up for a shoe-shopping expedition and discovers that Elaine’s bed hasn’t been slept in.

Elaine and Marisol are both succubi. And Elaine is missing. But when Marisol slams into her Lieutenant’s office to start a missing person’s investigation, she discovers that Elaine isn’t the only young succubus who has disappeared; twenty young succubi have been kidnapped over the last two years.

The Otherworlder Enforcement Agency has been tracking the case, right to her house. But the Agent the OWEA has sent, Valerio Costa, doesn’t like or trust succubi, not since one destroyed his brother’s life.

And Marisol still has other cases to deal with. There’s a murderer on the loose on the Otherworlder side of Chicago, one who burns his (or her) victims to an ash so fine the cremains can barely be recognized as human. The murderer can only be a powerful coven, or an even more powerful salamander. Which is just what Agent Costa is, a salamander.

Could the disappearances and the murders be part of the same case? The OWEA’s psychometrist says that all the victims are alive, right up until those cremains are identified as a missing siren, one previously unconnected to the case.

Then one of the victims turns up, with her powers subverted into something out of a nightmare, and her memory wiped clean. Marisol discovers that Costa has been keeping even more secrets from her about the case than even she expected from an OWEA agent–and she expected plenty.

But her sister’s life and sanity are on the line, and Marisol needs to trust someone. Agent Valerio Costa is the only one who might be able to help her get her sister back in one piece.

He’s also the hottest thing she’s ever seen–and not just because he’s a salamander. But if she trusts him and she’s wrong, he won’t need his powers to burn her heart out.

Escape Rating A-: I absolutely adore the Files of the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency series by Tiffany Allee (see my review of Banshee Charmer here). One of the things that she has done that is particularly neat is pull in species that are not the same-old, same-old. Every urban fantasy series has vamps and werewolves. And they are here, but that’s not all.

Marisol is temporarily partnering with Astrid at the beginning of the story because Astrid’s vamp partner Claude is on vacation. I love this! A vampire taking a vacation. (I hope Astrid gets a story later, BTW)

But the heroine of Banshee Charmer was a half-banshee. Not many banshee heroines. The hero of Succubus Lost is a salamander. Again, not all that common. Also, succubi, while they aren’t rare, aren’t the flavor of the month, either.

I missed some of the “cop shop” banter from Banshee Charmer. Marisol isn’t “one of the boys” the way that Mac was, so the flavor was different. But I did like the way that the events of book one affected book 2. Costa’s ID got thoroughly checked out, after the Chicago P.D. got fooled the last time.

Succubus Lost is urban fantasy that includes a strong romance between two people who have no particular reason to like or trust each other at the beginning, but need each other to solve a case. Watching them work through all their issues to earn their happy ending, is very, very satisfying.

Drowning Mermaids

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

If you’ve ever watched The Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel, then you have an inkling of just how dangerous crab fishing in Alaska can be. The crab fishing season out of the small town of Soldotna is just part of the setting of Drowning Mermaids by Nadia Scrieva.

The dangers of the sea are more than the usual in this first book of Ms. Scrieva’s new Sacred Breath series. Those dangers also include predatory and dangerous mer-people. In Ms. Scrieva’s paranormal version of events, the Bermuda Triangle disappearance are merely collateral damage of some age-old clan warfare under the sea.

The first person to drown in Drowning Mermaids isn’t a mermaid. The man was a crewmember on Captain Trevain Murphy’s Fishin’ Magician. But Leo was the first man that Trevain has lost in all his years as captain, and he doesn’t understand what went wrong. There was no storm, and Leo was a greenhorn, but not that green. The boy wasn’t drunk or over-tired. He just seems to have fallen overboard for no good reason.

The crew are drowning their sorrows, at the local strip joint when Trevain’s world takes a turn from the morose into the fantastic. A dancer steps onto the rickety stage, not to do the usual bump-and-grind, but to perform 14 minutes of mind-altering, heart stopping ballet. She does still strip at the end. It’s required. And she is unquestionably beautiful. And seems unbearably young to the fifty-plus Trevain. But her dancing is what speaks to his sorrow and confusion.

His brother, the ne’er-do-well Callder, notices that Trevain and the dancer, Aazuria, steal glances throughout the evening once her dance is over. He clumsily arranges for them to talk. Aazuria seems an old soul in a very young face. Trevain is the only person she wants to talk to.

Because Aazuria is not the girl she appears to be. Far from it. She is the Princess of Adlivun, one of the undersea kingdoms, and has lived most of her life in the waters under the Arctic. She is also over 600 years old. Trevain is the only person who talks to her as an intelligent person and not as just a beautiful body.

Not that he’s not interested in that too, but he’s gentleman enough to believe that since she can’t possibly be interested in him, he doesn’t want to look like an old fool chasing after a young girl. He’s happy with the intelligent conversation.

Trevain is generous and kind to Aazuria, expecting nothing in return except friendship. He has no idea who she is, or what she is.

What he doesn’t know is that her people are at war, and that she is on land for her safety. And that her war is about to crash into his coast, sweeping his life into the rocks. If he can manage to give up every single one of his preconceived notions about himself and the world, he can have his heart’s desire.

Or he can be alone and bitter for the rest of his life.

Escape Rating C+: I’m a sucker for stories set in Alaska, after living there for three years. Some parts of the setting were familiar. The whole thing about people coming to Alaska for the very high wages, and then getting stuck because the prices are equally high, that rings so true. And the place gets in your blood. If you can make the adjustment to the dark in the winter.

About the story. On the one hand, I kept turning pages, because I really wanted to see how the author made it all work out. There are not a lot of mermaid paranormal romance stories in general, and usually they use the siren theme. This one didn’t, and I was glad of that. It’s always good to see someone take a different road. Or sea lane, in this case.

I liked that Trevain and Aazuria did a twist on the older woman/younger man theme, since they are but aren’t.  But they also unfortunately hit the insta-love, or at least the insta-connection thing a bit too hard. Trevain invites someone he sees as a girl working in a strip joint to move in with him, along with all her sisters, during their first meeting. Even in small-town Alaska, that’s just not likely.

On that third invisible hand there’s a family sub-plot involving Trevain’s mother that is heart-breaking. And it’s a twist you don’t quite see coming.

Nadia will be awarding a “Drowning Mermaids” beer mug to one randomly drawn commenter on the tour as well as bookmarks to randomly drawn commenters at every stop. So please comment for you chance to win Mermaid bookmarks and maybe even a chance to drown your sorrows with a Mermaid beer mug!