Tag: 2012 NetGalley Reading Challenge

A Lady Awakened

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

A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant is a romance that flies in the face of convention, just like  its main characters do. In fact, this debut romance is so unconventional that reviewers have found it impossible to merely “like” the book.  It’s either been really loved, or practically a “wallbanger” (as in “throw against the wall in disgust”) book. I’m glad I followed my curiosity and read it, the differences made it well worth the time.

Martha Russell is a widow after a mere 10 months of marriage. Her late husband was a drunken fool, but his pride kept him from countermanding her orders for improvements on the estate and nearby village. He was unwilling to admit that he couldn’t remember whether he had given the orders for the school, and the new roofs for the tenants’ cottages, and the other things she thought were necessary. Drunken blackouts, you see.

But driving himself and his carriage into a crash had not been in her late husband’s plans. Nor had it been in Martha’s. Russell had expected Martha to provide him with an heir to his estate, it was why he married her. Russell hadn’t wanted his brother to inherit. Thomas Russell was still remembered around the neighborhood for his abuse of the female servants.

But Martha hadn’t had time to give her husband an heir, in spite of his assiduous efforts in that area, distasteful to Martha as they were. Martha had nevertheless done her duty by him, and dreamed of all the improvements she could make to the estate.

When the lawyer reads her late husband’s will, Martha knows she isn’t pregnant. She’s three days past certain. However, she feigns uncertainty in order to buy time. She’s desperate, and knows there must be a way to keep the demon brother at bay.

In Church on Sunday, the Lord does provide in the form of a handsome and feckless neighbor. Theophilus Mirkwood has been forced by his father to rusticate at their family’s country estate until he learns responsibility. Martha Russell offers to pay him 500 pounds for his stud services, for one month.

Yes, that’s right. She wants him to get her pregnant. He thinks she’s also paying for pleasure. She is absolute dead set against enjoying the act. Martha refuses to surrender any part of her essential self, and that includes her pleasure, to a man she sees as a wastrel.

And yet, this is a love story. It really is. It’s amazing how they get there.

Escape Rating B: This is the first romance I’ve ever read where the sex is not any good for either partner for the first half of the book. It’s an amazing place to start the story. Really, truly. There are a lot of stories where sex turns into love, and stories where the heroine’s first time isn’t so great, but this one is a first. The sex isn’t good for either of them, and it isn’t supposed to be.

This courtship is about a lot of other parts of their relationship. When all of the other issues (and are there ever a LOT of other issues) are resolved, then the issues in the bedroom work out. But this is a romance and not erotica. Love is more important than sex, in spite of where (and how) they start.

Gold Star Girl

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | NetGalley> reading challenges

I always thought I was a Skyline girl. I still stop by for a three-way whenever I’m in town.

And unless you’re from Cincinnati, you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Or your mind is still rolling around in the gutter.  Not to mention, you are seriously confused about what any of the above might possibly have to do with my usual blog topics.

Emily, a.k.a WilowRaven over at Red House Books, has been hosting the quarterly NetGalley Month Read-a-thons for the past, well, lo these many moons and she has apparently gone whole hog and decided to host a 2012 NetGalley Reading Challenge.

The 2012 NetGalley Reading Challenge has levels. In this particular case, the levels are represented by stars. Blue Star is up to 10 books, Green up to 20, Red up to 30, and Gold, is the 30+ level.

I think I might have already read 10 books from NetGalley. So I am hereby signing up for the Gold Star level.

Even if, back home in Cincy, Gold Star Chili was always the “other guys” to me.

About that “three-way”? Spaghetti, covered with Skyline chili, covered with shredded cheddar cheese. The taste of home.

Cinder

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

Cinder by Marissa Meyer is a retelling of the Cinderella story with a YA/cyberpunk twist. And it’s a pretty good retelling at that. I just think it would have been a better story if it didn’t try so hard to be sure it stepped on each and every base on its way around the story.

Cinderella is always a second-class citizen. In Meyer’s variation, Cinder is second-class because she is a cyborg. Cyborgs are considered less-than-human by those who have been fortunate enough not to have lived through catastrophic accidents such as the one that cost Cinder her hand and her foot at age 11.

But Cinder does not remember the traumatic accident, or anything about her early life. And the man who might have told her is dead. Linh Garan adopted her and left her in the care of his wife Adra just before his death. Garan was an inventor; he liked to tinker with things. He may have adopted Cinder to tinker with. He might have done something to her internal processes. But no one knows, least of all Cinder.

Adra hates and resents Cinder, while at the same time greedily taking every credit that Cinder earns as a gifted mechanic. Adra is entitled to retain all of Cinder’s earnings, forever. Adra is Cinder’s guardian, and Cinder’s earnings are the only thing keeping the household out of the poorhouse. The household, of course, contains not only the nasty stepmother Adra, but Cinder’s stepsisters, Peony and Pearl.

This Cinderella tale has been transplanted in time and place. We are still on Earth, but it is a future, post-apocalyptic Earth, after a dreadful Fourth World War first devastated, then finally united humanity under an Imperial Commonwealth. Cinder lives in the Eastern Commonwealth capital of New Beijing. The moon was not just settled, but broke away from the Earth pre-WWIV and created its own government. The Lunars have become not just a separate government, but in some ways, a separate race, because they have the capacity to manipulate bio-electric energy to a point that seems like magic. It’s a LOT like the Force in Star Wars, and too many of the Lunars mostly act like the Sith. The Lunar Queen and Emperor Palpatine would probably have a lot in common, if they didn’t try to kill each other on sight.

Prince Kai brings his personal android to Cinder at her stall in the market to repair. He says it’s because it was his teaching android when he was growing up, and he’s emotionally attached to it.

Cinder, who shouldn’t have the neural circuitry to swoon, practically swoons over Prince Kai. She is able to suppress her reaction. What she isn’t able to suppress is her knowledge that he is lying. There is something important about the little android, and it isn’t merely an emotional attachment.

Kai lets something slip, he is doing research on leutmosis, the deadly plague that is sweeping the world. It is 100% fatal. Cinder wonders if his android contains some of his research.

The research that Kai might or might not be conducting becomes even more important to Cinder when her stepsister Peony contracts the deadly plague. Peony was the only person who truly cared for Cinder, and now she is gone. And in her rage, Adra signs Cinder over the government as a test subject. Cinder, as a cyborg, has no rights at all.

Once Cinder is tested, the truth of her origins begins to be revealed, not to Cinder, but to others who have been searching for her desperately. Nothing in her life has been as it has seemed.

But Cinder is going to the ball.

Escape Rating B-: The cover of this book is awesome. The book has its moments but I figured out the big reveal very, very early on. It’s better if the surprise remains a surprise as long as possible. Instead, everything was telegraphed miles ahead of time.

I loved the scene where Cinder drives to the ball and shows up in all her grease-stained glory to try to rescue Kai, but I saw it coming miles away.

And, as many other reviewers have noted, what does Kai look like? He’s never described. Ever. There’s a rule somewhere that all brides are, by definition, beautiful. Is there a corollary that all princes are handsome? Therefore there’s no requirement that they be described? Is he blond? Does he have black hair? Brown eyes? Blue eyes? Swoon-worthy is just not a sufficient description.

And I still want to find out what happens next. I want to see that Lunar Queen get what she deserves. Ring-side seats for that show would be very nice indeed.

The Black Stiletto

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

What if you found out your mother used to be a superhero? That’s the premise behind Raymond Benson’s The Black Stiletto, and it makes for one amazing story.

When I say superhero, don’t think of the family from Pixar’s The Incredibles. It wasn’t that kind of book, and this isn’t that kind of family. Benson’s Black Stiletto is way more like a female version of the original Bob Kane Batman.

What do I mean by that? Unlike Superman, the X-Men or the Fantastic Four, Batman is an unmutated, grown on Earth, human being. Highly trained and highly skilled, and possibly obsessive-compulsive to the max, but completely human. In the original Bob Kane comics of the late 1930’s, Batman began by avenging the deaths of his parents.

The Black Stiletto also has revenge on her mind.

But the story begins with a middle-aged man named Martin Talbot reading his mother’s diaries from the late 1950’s. His mother Judy is in a nursing home in suburban Chicago with Alzheimer’s; she doesn’t recognize him, or anyone else, anymore. So her lawyer gives him a floorplan of her house which shows a secret room in the basement, and a key.

Behind that hidden door, Martin discovers a treasure-trove and a puzzle. His mother’s diaries are there, from 1958 onwards. All of the original comic books featuring the Black Stiletto, which are worth a fortune on the collectible market. Two Black Stiletto costumes. But the diaries are astounding. The diaries of his mother’s life in New York City as a young woman, when she lived over a gym and learned to fight.

Martin remembers his mother always kept in shape. There’s still a punching bag hanging in that basement. He remembers her practicing in every place they lived. He knows she lived in New York, but not with him. He was born in Los Angeles. But he never knew his father, the mysterious Richard Talbot. And reading the diaries, he realizes that he never knew his mother. But for the diaries, because of Alzheimer’s he never would.

But was she really the Black Stiletto? And was the Stiletto a hero, or a just a vigilante? Read along with Martin to find out.

Escape Rating B: What an astonishing book! Superheroes are always larger than life. To suddenly discover that one of your parents was one, how much would that rock your world? When Martin discovers that his mother was nothing like he thought she was, it makes him question the whole of his life.

The diary that Martin is reading only covers the very earliest period of Judy’s time as the Black Stiletto. Those early years do come back to haunt the present, but it’s those early years that I really want to know about. Martin has lots more diaries to read, and I’m dying to know what’s in them. Read The Black Stiletto and you will be too.

Chain Reaction

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

Chain Reaction by Zoë Archer is a combination of space opera and science fiction romance. And it’s a combination that blasts some serious fun, especially for those who enjoy love stories of the hotshot vs. nerd persuasion.

“Stainless” Celene Jur is the hotshot pilot. She’s not just a member of the elite 8th Wing, she’s the stainless steel legend that everyone looks up to. But legends aren’t ever allowed a moment to cut loose and be human, not even while recovering from being captured and nearly sold into slavery.

Nils Calder is not just a geek, he is proud to be the best engineer in the division proudly known as NerdWorks. Nils has reverse engineered the device that disabled Celene’s Black Wraith ship’s previously unhackable controls and caused her capture. The secret of the Black Wraith controls is the only thing keeping the 8th Wing alive in its fight against PRAXIS.

Nils has also discovered who developed that device: a former NerdWorks engineer who went, not just rogue, but crazy and mercenary into the bargain.

The device hasn’t been sold to PRAXIS. Not yet. There’s still time for 8th Wing to track down the designer and remove the threat.

Celene Jur needs to lead this mission. She has to erase that feeling of powerlessness that overcame her when the device was activated. Wiping the designer off the face of the cosmos is the only way she can accomplish that. The threat to 8th Wing must be eliminated. And “Stainless” Jur is the best.

Nils Calder is the only engineer who can track the device. The rogue was damn good, but not quite good enough to beat him. But Nils needs to be on the mission. The rogue’s base signal is constantly changing. And his security will be a very tough engineering puzzle. Jur needs to take an engineer. She needs to take him.

But this is a stealth mission, not a raid. The Phantom ship they are taking only holds a crew of two. Jur wants to take another soldier, not a nerd. But when Nils passes all of her tests, Celene discovers that geeks can be soldiers every bit as much as pilots can. Maybe more.

But can she go back to being “Stainless” Jur after she gets used to being just human?

Escape Rating B+: If science fiction romance blasts your jets, you’ll enjoy this. Chain Reaction is set in the same universe as Archer’s Collision Course, and I would recommend reading that first to get more of the world-building, but the story of Chain Reaction does stand on its own.

Chain Reaction is about the partnership that develops between Celene and Nils. Each of them has to step out of their comfort zone to become true partners to each other, and watching them do that is a terrific rocketship ride.

Celene is afraid that Nils is interested in the legend and not the woman. It’s happened to her too many times before. Nils is worried that if they do manage to have a relationship during the mission, as bad an idea as that is, as soon as the mission is over, she’ll go back to not noticing he exists. Pilots and Nerds do not mix in 8th Wing. Both their fears are realistic, and it takes work, as it should, for them to get past them. I love it when a happy ending is earned. And so richly deserved.

Midnight Reckoning

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

Midnight Reckoning by Kendra Leigh Castle is something to read when you want a paranormal romance that takes all the standard elements and throws them in a blender! The mix that pours out makes for a very enjoyable read, while adding a few interesting twists to the usual recipe.

We met both the hero and heroine of Midnight Reckoning in the first book of Castle’s Dark Dynasties series, Dark Awakening (reviewed here). And when they met, they pissed each other off.

Lyra Black is a member of the Thorn, a werewolf pack. But Lyra is much more than just a member of the pack, she’s the Alpha’s daughter. And she’s an only child. Lyra wants what’s best for the Thorn, and she knows that her cousin Eric isn’t it. But the wolves have always chosen their Alphas through a physical contest, based on who is the strongest, fastest and cleverest. Females may be fast and clever, but they just aren’t as strong as the males. Traditionally, they don’t fight to become Alpha. But Lyra believes that Eric is so tradition-bound that he will lead the Thorn back to the human-enslaving dark ages, and in the 21st century, those days are long gone. Lyra has declared herself as a challenger for the right to become the Alpha’s Second, her father’s named successor. Being her father’s daughter will not help her. Her father wants her to mate with someone strong enough to fight in her place.

Wolves mate for life, and all that is required for the mating bond is sex. It doesn’t even have to be willing sex. Rape will cause the mating bond to lock into place. Lyra is being hunted.

Jaden Harrison threw Lyra Black out of a vampire sanctuary the first time he met her. Not so much because she was a werewolf, although there is that whole vamp/werewolf rivalry thing, but because he wanted her. Bad. And because there was no way he should feel that much desire for a wolf. Any wolf. He wanted her as far away from himself as possible, so he threw her out of the sanctuary. But he never forgot her.

So when he found her in his clan’s territory again, but this time threatened with rape, he helped her kill her would-be rapists. But he didn’t expect Lyra’s gratitude. He expected what he got. She took his head off. But only verbally. And only after stumbling into him and revealing, just for a second, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Even if it was inappropriate. And impossible.

She left behind a necklace, a talisman, under the body of one of the wolves that Jaden had killed. Since she had been protecting the talisman, Jaden chose to go into Thorn territory to return it.

Why? Because he was delaying decisions about his own future. His newly-formed vampire clan, the Lilim, wanted him to become Chief of Security. He wasn’t sure he was ready to become an officer, when he had so recently been a slave of the Ptolemy clan of highborns.

But when he returned the necklace to Lyra, he was faced with another, and much more tempting offer. Teach Lyra to fight wolves, so she could take her own place in the Alpha challenge.

Why would a werewolf ask a vampire to teach his werewolf daughter to fight other werewolves? And what temptations will Jaden and Lyra face as teacher and student? And what is really going on within the werewolf pack? So many questions, and so little time to find the answers when threats come from all sides.

Escape Rating B: The action in this was even more fast and furious than in Dark Awakening. But I think the story probably works better if you’ve read both books, although that’s far from a hardship. I liked Dark Awakening, and I would recommend for paranormal romance fans. Midnight Reckoning a fun and very fast read.

I am really starting to want some more information about the Shadows. They are clearly moving events and people behind the scenes, and their motivations are murky to say the least. I hope more of that is in the next book. Since the next book is titled Shadow Rising (July 2012) maybe I’m going to get my wish!

The First Rule of Ten

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

The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay is a surprise. It is surprisingly good. There are a lot of things about this mystery that are unconventional, including the detective it introduces, but I was hooked from the first page.

Tenzing Norbu (“Ten” for short) grew up wanting to become a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. The ambition would not have been that far out of the ordinary, if it weren’t for the location where Ten did that growing up. Ten spent his formative years in a Buddhist monastery in Dharamshala, India, where his father expected him to become a monk, just as he was. The fact that Ten was the product of his father’s impulsive middle-age marriage to an American college dropout attempting (and failing) to “find herself” on a trip through India (and Europe) didn’t seem to matter to his father’s plans. Nor did his father understand what role Ten’s mother’s wanderlust, or her influence, might have had in his makeup.

Not to mention, eight-year-old boys are lousy at obeying mindless rules, never mind teenagers. Ten just wasn’t cut out to be a monk. He wanted to be a detective, even if he had no real clue what that meant. But he tried to please his father.

An intervention from a lama when Ten turned 18 sent him to the Buddhist Cultural Center in Los Angeles on an exchange program. From there, his journey took him to a GED program, US Citizenship, and eventually, the LAPD.

But several years after making detective in the police department, Ten is no longer satisfied. He still enjoys police work, what he hates is paperwork, meetings and rules. Most of the same things he disliked in the monastery.

As The First Rule of Ten opens, Ten is wounded while trying to intervene in a domestic disturbance. For Ten, it is the last in a series of signs that tell him it is time to resign from the LAPD and become a private investigator. So he turns in his paperwork and does just that. Ten tells his partner Bill that the incident was a case of his “cosmic alarm clock” telling him it was time for his “job karma” to change. While this wouldn’t work for most people, Bill’s “job karma” is part of the reason that Ten is making the switch. Bill and his wife have recently had twins, and Bill wants to move into an administrative job and off the street. Their partnership is breaking up whether Ten leaves or not.

As a private investigator, Ten’s first case arrives before he has even hung out his “shingle”. A woman comes to his door, looking for the previous owner of his house. She’s not looking to hire him, she just wants Zimmy’s whereabouts, because she’s Zimmy’s first ex-wife. But Zimmy used to be a big rock-and-roller before he got clean and sober and left LA, and Ten doesn’t provide a forwarding address. He can tell the woman is hiding something, maybe a lot of somethings. But when she turns up dead the next morning — and not just dead, but tortured before she died — Ten feels like he owes her for not listening to what was wrong. He didn’t want to get involved, and now he’s involved. He has a case, even if no one is paying.

Ten believes that if he investigates, someone will eventually pay. And someone does, in more ways than one.

And if you’re wondering what the The First Rule of Ten actually is, it’s “Don’t ignore intuitive tickles, lest they reappear as sledgehammers.” Words to live by. Or die by.

Escape Rating A-: I started this one night, and re-surfaced over 100 pages into it. I was amazed at how fast I got sucked into Ten’s world and his point of view. He’s a fascinating character to follow. He retains just enough of his “outsider” perspective to make his perspective and internal voice different from the run-of-the-mill private eye. His choices work for him, but they wouldn’t for another detective. His screw-ups are definitely his own, too.

There’s a teaser for The Second Rule of Ten in the back of the book. I don’t want just a teaser. I want the whole book!

 

Cast in Ruin

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

Cast in Ruin is the 7th book in Michelle Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra. Saying that I enjoyed this series doesn’t even come close. I became so enthralled with Kaylin and her crew that I put the whole Elantra series on my “Best of 2011” list. Now I get to tell you why.

It’s a little hard to categorize this series. It reads like an urban fantasy. Complete with snark. There’s a very high snark quotient, and it’s definitely of the “snicker, snicker, snort” persuasion. It’s also very dry humor, and very situational. What made me chuckle was based on the personalities, rather than because something was funny per se. And it made things damn hard to explain to my husband, who wanted to know what my chortles were all about.

Like so much of urban fantasy, a lot of the humor is gallows humor. The city of Elantra has as much crime as any big city, magical or otherwise. In addition, there’s the more unusual and magical sort of crime. Investigating the seamier side of human (and other-human) nature seems to require a taste for gallows humor in whoever (or whatever) does that investigating. Whether that investigator has skin, fangs, fur, feathers, or scales.

But if the Chronicles of Elantra are urban fantasy, complete with detectives, they are not just urban fantasy. The city of Elantra does not appear to be on Earth, or in any history that includes our Earth, at least not so far. Elantra, in this reviewer’s mind, is a high-fantasy world. The human characters that we identify with at first, Kaylin and later Severn, are part of a race that is not native to Elantra. The native races are the immortals, the Dragons and the Barrani. Then there are the mortal native races, the Leontines and the Aerians.  Plus another mortal race who somehow came later to Elantra, the Tha’alani.

And into this polyglot steps Kaylin Nera. Kaylin is a child of the fiefs. In other words, she grew up outside the edge of the city, outside of the laws of the Dragon Emperor, and was poorer than poor. But for no reason that anyone has ever been able to determine, magic interfered with her life. Runes of ancient script became written on her skin just before her 13th birthday. Because of those runes, other girls died in an attempt to awaken some power that Kaylin did not and still does not want.

But Kaylin has magic whether she wants it or not. And because she does, she has become involved with people that she never would have imagined when she was begging on the streets in the fief of Nightshade.

By the time of Cast in Ruin, Kaylin is in her 20s. She has come a long way from the 13 year old waif who first came to the Halls of Law and attempted to assassinate the Hawklord. She should have been executed for her crime. Instead, the Hawks adopted her as a mascot. And when she was old enough, she became one of them. A ground Hawk, an investigator of crimes against the Dragon Emperor’s laws.

Seven identical women have been found dead in Tiamaris’ fief. But in the fiefs, the Dragon Emperor’s laws don’t apply, even if Tiamaris was a member of the Emperor’s court until just a few short days ago. But Tiamaris has also allowed the new race of giants who had come through the mysterious “ways” to settle in his fief. And the giants have angered the “Shadows” at the fief borders, the “Shadows” that threatens the stability of all the magic that underpins Elantra. And those seven identical dead women, well, number eight shows up with a message, then dies. But when number nine comes to call, let’s just say that everyone’s assumptions about everything are about to come unglued. Along with a few dragons.

Escape Rating A+: This was fantastic, stupendous, wonderful. I wish I could take Kaylin out for drinks because I love her brand of snark. But she’s also one of the most complicated characters I’ve met in a long time. She grows and changes and knows she’s growing up. She has so much stuff in her head and she doesn’t believe in herself but she keeps trying anyway. And she has so much to forgive herself for, but not as much as she thinks she does. Give yourself a really, really gigantic treat. Take the time to start with Cast in Moonlight (in Hunter’s Moon) the novella that starts it all, then dive straight into to Cast in Shadow and don’t look back.