Tag: 2012 Reading Romance Challenge

Night Walker

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

Night Walker by Lisa Kessler is a paranormal romance that combines two very powerful themes in modern PNR, vampires and reincarnation. Either one of those elements would make for a very moving love story. Mix them together and you have one very special romance indeed.

The story begins with our modern heroine facing a very contemporary dilemma. Her fiance is a two-timing snake. Kate’s just caught him with one of his grad students, and their engagement is very definitely over. Now she’s on her way from Reno to San Diego to finish up the other unfinished business in her life, closing up her late parents’ house. After her parents’ death in an accident two years ago, she’s been putting off that closure. Now it’s time. Ending her engagement, cancelling her wedding, and realizing that she’s more embarrassed and angry than emotionally devastated, tells her that it’s finally time to take control over the rest of her life.

Kate and her best girlfriends do the tourist thing in San Diego, visiting the Mission de Alcala on the Day of the Dead for Mass brings her into contact with the darkly handsome and eminently mysterious Calisto Terana as she examines the rare and beautiful flowers placed on a centuries-old grave in the Native cemetery surrounding the Mission. Calisto gives Kate the strangest sense of deja vu, as if they have not merely met, but known each other intimately, before. Kate is certain she’d remember meeting a man as compelling as Calisto before.

Kate is both right and wrong. She’s never met Calisto before. But he remembers her. He’s walked the night for two centuries, waiting for her to return.

When the Mission de Alcala was built, Calisto Terana was Father Gregorio Salvador, and he was part of the Spanish mission that helped to build it. When he fell in love with a native girl he betrayed his vows and decided to leave the church. The church refused to let him go. Someone foolishly thought that if they got the girl out of the way, their errant priest would meekly return to the fold.

Instead, he found an entirely different path. A much, much darker way, but one that allowed him to wait for his lover’s spirit to be born again.

There were only two flaws to Gregorio’s, now Calisto’s plan. In the 21st century, Kate remembered nothing of her previous existence. Calisto had to woo and win her all over again. He loved and wanted her more after two centuries of waiting than he had in the flush of first love. The hunger of a night walker made him even less patient than a normal man.

That other flaw? The church is eternal.

Escape Rating A-: I was surprised at how good this was. Even though the elements of the story have been used before, the combination was different enough that I got sucked right in. One of the particularly neat things is that the historic aspects, the Mission and the history of it, are pretty close to what’s known of the events. It’s one of those points in colonial history where records were lost so there’s a ton of room for speculation, fiction and well, just plain flights of fancy. This story was an especially good way of filling that gap.

I didn’t use the word vampire in the review because, although Calisto is a vampire, he doesn’t think of himself as one or refer to himself as one. He knows what vampires are, and they aren’t him. He thinks they’re flashier, for one thing.

The next book in this series is The Night Demon, and starts out in the Yucatan jungle, sometime later this year. I can hardly wait.

 

 

 

On One Condition

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

On One Condition by Diane Alberts is a contemporary romance about a marriage of convenience. That’s not a combination that should work, but it does pretty well, most of the  time.

This story has an absolutely terrific start. It begins with the, let’s call it the “morning after the night before”, and it’s not pretty. But it is hilarious. Johanna wakes up in bed with a naked, gorgeous man with an absolutely yummy British accent, and no memory of his name. A terrific memory of how wonderful the sex was the night before, but no name. And she just wants him gone.

No matter how fantastic he was in bed (and he was) she does not want to remember her one night of cutting loose from her usual tightly-wound behavior. She’s a kindergarten teacher! She keeps her head under the pillow while she listens to him dress, refuses to take his card, and hopes to forget the whole incident as soon as humanly possible.

This is not to be, or there wouldn’t be a story.

Even living in the U.S. Viscount Damon Haymes has never met a woman who wasn’t after him for his money and/or his title, not until Johanna threw his ass out of her apartment that morning. He wanted to see her again. But, he was willing to honor her rather vehemently stated wishes.

Until fate intervened. Forcefully.

Damon had inherited his title, and his fortune, and all of his businesses, just a few months previously, after his father’s death. He was still, let’s say, settling in to his responsibilities. The sheer number of lawyers, accountants and managers involved in tracking everything staggered him. And he trusted some of them a little too much.

So when a new lawyer arrived in his office to say that yet another codicil had been discovered in his father’s will, requiring that he marry within three months, Damon didn’t question it. He should have.

What he did do was attend the Valentine’s Day Charity Auction that evening in his father’s place. The auction benefited Rowling Elementary School, and, of course, that is the place where Johanna teaches. What gets auctioned? Dinner with one of the unmarried teachers? Does Damon wildly outbid any other contenders for dinner with Johanna? Of course he does.

But Damon doesn’t need a dinner date, Damon needs a wife. However, Johanna doesn’t particularly want a husband. She nearly had to take out a restraining order on her last boyfriend, she’s not interested in another one. What she is interested in is money for the school. So they make a deal. A marriage of convenience for one year, long enough to satisfy that pesky will. Johanna gets a tidy nest egg, and a LOT of money for the school. Damon gets to keep his fortune. And a year to convince Johanna to have a marriage with benefits, for a year.

Johanna believes their marriage to be a business arrangement. It’s a contract. A one-year contract. As far as she is concerned, they can’t be “friends with benefits”, or whatever it is that Damon is aiming for. She told him that first morning when she threw him out that she didn’t do one-night stands. She didn’t do them because she knows she can’t give her body without throwing her heart in along with it.

Reminding herself that what they have is a business arrangement will keep her from being heart-broken when their year is over.

But sharing a house, sharing every day life, and sharing all that chemistry (that one night was really fantastic!) was bound to break down Johanna’s defenses eventually.

Then Damon and Johanna have to find out whether their “marriage of convenience” can stand the strain put on it by some very inconvenient circumstances.

Escape Rating C+: This story starts out with a bang. (Well, literally, but that takes place the night before.)

The story follows classic themes in a number of ways. He’s rich, she’s average. He has to marry to keep his money, she’s the only woman he knows who doesn’t care about his money. Each of them falls for the other, and keeps that little fact a secret as long as possible, because they are just sure the other doesn’t feel the same.

All of that was fun. The second-chance courtship was quite seductive.

(Spoiler alert) Okay, here’s the thing.  A “marriage of convenience” being a requirement in daddy’s will is a bit contrived for the 21st century. But it did make for a cute story. However, in this case, it turned out to be a fake, because Damon wasn’t paying attention to all the businesses he’d inherited. He should have had his own lawyer verify the codicil, and didn’t. But he wasn’t that stupid. My willing suspension of disbelief jumped its tracks at this point late in the story and had a difficult time reboarding the train for the ending.

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

 

Somebody to Love

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

Somebody to love, isn’t that what we all want? It’s such a universal wish that it’s been a song title, over and over, from Queen to Jefferson Airplane to (gulp) Justin Bieber. At least Glee went with the classics, and covered Queen’s awesome version, pretty well, at that.

Somebody to Love is also the title of Kristan Higgins’ latest contemporary romance. And it fits even better than the songs. Because every single character, from Parker Welles, the poor little rich girl heroine, to James Cahill, the lawyer with a whole lot of baggage, to Parker’s daddy Harry Welles, even right down to the dog Parker adopts, Beauty, every single one of them is searching for somebody to love. And somebody to love them back.

That tale of searching, and finding, and the other things they lose and find along the way, makes for one fantastic story.

Parker Welles starts out as the quintessentially poor little rich girl. She lives in a mansion, Grayhurst, that belongs to Daddy Dearest, her father Harry. She even refers to him that way. Harry owns Grayhurst, but only visits when he wants to impress some clients, because Harry is a real wheeler-dealer. Harry never comes just to visit his daughter, he only shows up with his entourage, his interchangeable flunkies in their conservative suits.

Parker even tries to forget they have names. She refers to them as “Thing One and Thing Two”.

But they aren’t interchangeable. “Thing Two” might be just a yes-man, but “Thing One” is Harry’s lawyer. His very young and attractive lawyer. Something it turns out that Parker has very good reason to know.

There are two things that keep Parker Welles from being a classic poor little rich girl. Thing One is that she is a best-selling children’s author. Unfortunately for her, she gave all the money from her books to charity, because she didn’t need it. Or so she thought.

Thing Two is that Parker has a five-year old son, Nicky. Who she unashamedly had out-of-wedlock and cheerfully shares in joint-custody with his father. Who just married her best friend.

And Parker is going to need her friends. Because Daddy Dearest is going to jail for insider trading. He lost the house. All the houses. And everything in them. And Parker’s trust fund. And Nicky’s trust fund.

Parker has just one thing left. A house her great aunt left for her in Gideon’s Cove, Maine. Parker thinks she can flip the house and have a nest egg to start over. It turns out that the house isn’t quite in shape for that. But, Parker finds something better in that small town on the remote coast of Maine.

She finds her strength. She finds family she never expected to find. She finds friendship. She rescues a terrific dog.

And in the most unlikely person, and at what seems like the lowest point in her life, Parker Welles finds Somebody to Love.

Escape Rating A: Heart-warming is such an over-used word, but it definitely applies to Somebody to Love. This contemporary romance definitely is heart-warming. The slowly simmering love story between Parker and James Cahill also warms up the temperature (and eventually Parker) quite nicely as well.

Both characters have a lot of emotional baggage they need to sort through. Not so much in the romance department, but in much earlier, and more fundamental relationships. They’re both afraid to love, and yet, they’ve found each other anyway. They want to trust, but they’re not sure they can, or if they should. And they both have good reasons for that wariness.

Beauty, the dog Parker adopts, has been beaten before too. Just the same, she learns to trust again. Metaphor, anyone?

The Zurian Child

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

The Zurian Child by Jessica E. Subject is the first book in her Mark of the Stars series. The actual “Zurian Child” of the title is a girl named Katrina (I wonder if naming her for the hurricane will be prophetic) but this first book isn’t really her story.

Katrina is a “chosen one”. She is fated to save her people. But she has to be born first. In The Zurian Child, readers are introduced to Katrina through the love story of her parents.

We also read of the harrowing exile of the Hemera people from their home planet, Alectrona. The very human-like Hemera flee to Earth just ahead of the monstrous Erebus, who hunt them across the stars.

Yes, I said stars. The Zurian Child is science fiction romance.

Hemera mostly blend into the human population, with a few key differences. They have webbed toes, and hidden gills, so they can breathe underwater. Hemera pregnancies are faster than human, so instead of 9 months, it seems to be about 7 months for a full-term baby. And sex once equals mates until death. All those differences have consequences for our story.

Oh, and the Erebus definitely follow the Hemera to Earth. They like it here. This is NOT a good thing. Not for the Hemera, not for the humans, and not for the Earth.

Bryce was the last child to reach the Hemera ships before the Erebus wiped out the final city. His parents didn’t make it. He was adopted on Earth by a human family, but his Hemera guardian made sure he remembered who he was and where he came from. He kept an eye out for other Hemera who hadn’t been so fortunate.

His guardian, Lorne, had been his foster father on the ship. It was Lorne’s grandmother who had made the prophecy of the “Zurian Child”. the child who would be born with the “Mark of the Stars” and who would save the people. Bryce and others searched for that child among the second and third generation Hemera.

As a member of the RCMP, Bryce was also in a position to learn that someone was systematically hunting down the Hemera. The investigators were always one step behind.

Bryce spent his life concentrating on his search for the Zurian Child, and on his efforts to find and destroy the Erebus. He made sure never to get involved with anyone, because he knew it would mean a lifetime commitment. And he already had two of those: to his search, and to protecting his people.

Then he met Lindsay, and it was too late. She was already bonded to another Hemera, his friend and fellow officer Quinn. Even worse, the first time he shook Lindsay’s hand, he realized that she was his intended soul mate. And it didn’t matter. Her bond to his friend was already in place. All Bryce could do was be a friend and protector. And that was all Lindsay wanted from him.

But there were other factors in play. The Erebus were increasingly active on Earth, but their methods had changed. And they began to specifically target Lindsay and Quinn because they were the destined parents of the fated Zurian Child. And as far as the Erebus were concerned, the Zurian Child had to be stopped, at all costs.

Escape Rating B-: This was an interesting variation on the “chosen one” theme. it’s always fun to start with the parents’ love story — I liked Cordelia’s Honor much better than the early Miles Vorkosigan books! This has an added twist with Bryce as the “odd man out” in someone else’s love story, but it is so important that he be there. It’s a different, and painful perspective.

There are parts with the Erebus and their minions that were slightly squicky. Not because they’re evil, it’s about their collaborator. Read the book and you’ll see for yourself. Someone always gives in to the dark side, but the behavior of this person went a bit too far into the ick-factor for my taste.

The next book in this saga (trilogy?) is going to start focusing more on Katrina. She’ll be old enough to have a point of view and she’s very precocious, although that’s not the only issue. I’m curious enough about what’s going to happen to her next that I’m in for the next book.

(This review copy was provided by Sizzling PR. The author requested additional reviews around the time of the book tour that just wrapped up.)

Finding My Faith

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

Finding My Faith by Carly Fall is book two of her Six Savior Series. Who are those “Six Saviors”? And what are they supposed to save? All, well, some anyway, will be revealed in this romantic suspense series with a hint of SFR and what feels like more than a touch of inspiration from the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

The titular “Faith” in Finding My Faith is Faith Cloudfoot. Faith works as a barista at a coffeeshop in Phoenix, just a little bit away from her overprotective father in Flagstaff.

You see, Faith is supposed to be the legendary, “Woman with Fire for Hair” among the Navajo people. Her red hair signifies that she will be the mother of a son who will cure the Earth. But only if she mates with a red-eyed night-wolf-warrior.

Faith doesn’t believe a bit of it. She just wants to expand her boundaries away from her overprotective parents. So, she fights to move to the “big city” of Phoenix.

Faith’s life in Phoenix is terrific for the first year. Then she is kidnapped and held in an underground “prison cell” with five other red-headed women. Even stranger, after she is unconscious, her spirit leaves her body and haunts the streets near the scene of the crime, until she finds one person who can see her–a big warrior with red shining eyes.

Rayner is that warrior. He is not a native to this planet. He, and his band of warriors, are from planet SR44. They’ve been on Earth for over two centuries, chasing a band of renegades their homeworld unimaginatively labelled Colonists, for originally escaping the law by colonizing a local moon.

Those Colonists are now on our Earth, becoming mass murderers, serial killers, and political despots and megalomaniacs. Oh, and interbreeding with humans. Colonists’ offspring usually become Colonists, too, but the strain does eventually become diluted. And nurture sometimes triumphs over nature.

Rayner and his band of brothers have come to Phoenix to hunt one of those Colonists who is kidnapping and murdering women. Rayner’s particular talent is to be able to unite spirits with their bodies, in other words, he can bring people back to life. But there’s a catch!

He can only do it if the spirit can find its body. And the body is still “habitable”. And if there is someone who loves the person and who they love back. A lot.

Rayner and his warrior band have been on Earth over two centuries, hunting down Colonists. They are inhabiting human bodies that never age. They can be killed, and they have to maintain their bodies, but no aging or death by natural causes.

Their natural forms are spirits of light. The light glows from their eyes at night. Rayner was a forest spirit on his homeworld, and the red light of his natural form glows from his eyes at night.

Faith’s spirit, wandering the streets of Phoenix, is the key to finding the Colonist that Rayner and his friends are out to catch. So it’s important that Rayner keep in contact with her as they hunt the bad guy. Very important.

There’s this one big problem. The Warriors can’t go back to their homeworld until the last Colonist is dead. It could be centuries. But if one of the Warriors falls in love with a human, and makes love with her (not just sex, but really makes love with her) he’ll lose his native form and become human, age, and eventually die.

He won’t be able to go home again. Ever. And he won’t be able to finish the mission. Rayner promised his mother he would come home. No matter how long it takes. He’s made a vow to finish the mission, no matter how long it takes. But he fell in love with Faith the minute he saw her spirit. What good is a warrior without his soul?

Escape Rating C: Based on the description, I was expecting more of a science fiction romance than this actually turned out to be. The SFR aspects are definitely downplayed in the story itself.  The story we have is über-powerful and über-huge band of good-guy warriors chasing down über-evil dudes who leave behind “ash” when they do something wicked.

Substitute baby-powder for ash. Sound familiar? I’m afraid it rang a bell for me. The band of testosterone brothers fighting evil is a tried-and-true theme, and it works, every war story uses it. But if you describe the good guys as all being over 6’5″, and the bad guys leave powder residue, then the theme is suddenly derivative. It might not be intentional, and YMMV.

The legend attached to Faith made the story a bit different. I liked her character, but  not the way she asserted herself one minute and then folded the next. If there was a reason for her willingness to bow to her parents’ wishes that I didn’t understand, where was that explanation? She is 23 not 16. If she feels like she can’t move out without permission, tell the readers why.

(This review copy was provided by Bewitching Book Tours. Bewitching requested additional reviews outside of the tour, and here we are!)

Random Acts

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

Random Acts by Alison Stone surprised me. It was a sweet romance that almost veered into inspirational territory, yet still told a good romantic suspense story.

Danielle Carson is a woman on the fast track to partnership at her high-powered law firm in Atlanta. She’s tried her best to leave small-town Mayport in her rearview mirror. It’s not that she doesn’t love her sister Jenny and her grandmother back home, she does, but the town itself holds a lot of bad memories.

In Mayport, everyone knows Danielle and Jenny as the daughters of an alcoholic who took up with a series of abusive men and finally abandoned her daughters. While leaving Danielle and Jenny with their grandmother was the best thing she could have done for them, she abandoned them. And everyone in Mayport watched Danielle and Jenny, waiting for them to turn out just like their mother.

Danielle had a crush on the boy next door, Patrick Kingley. He married someone else. Some of it was due to his four years’ seniority, but a lot more was small-town disapproval. His mother was sure Danielle would turn out badly. Instead, she just left. Being a lawyer hardly counts as bad, so the town disapproved of Danielle living in Atlanta instead.

When Jenny is the victim of a near-fatal car accident, Danielle rushes home, knowing the toll it will take on her ambitions at the office. But the accident is discovered to be no accident. And that boy next door is not a boy anymore. Patrick Kingley is all grown up, just like Danielle is. He’s been a soldier, a husband, a widower, and now a single father to a pre-teen daughter.

He’s also a cop.

And he knows that Jenny’s accident is no accident, because Jenny was working for him. Undercover. As a drug informant. And he hides that information from Danielle as the old ties between them start to knit together again. But it’s not just about him anymore. He can’t let someone into his life who will leave again, because it will break his daughter’s heart.

His own heartbreak is much less important to him. His daughter means everything.

And there is a killer on the loose who is willing to exploit that.

Escape Rating B-: The romance takes a backseat to the suspense. The suspense part of the story was handled well enough that I caught the red herring but didn’t figure out the final perpetrator. So that was good.

On the other hand, the romance definitely took the far back seat. The relationship between Danielle and Patrick’s daughter Ava is very sweetly handled, but the central love story gets very short shrift for what is intended as a romance. I know this might be intended as a “sweet” or “clean” romance, and so not erotic, but this couple didn’t generate a lot of heat, even of the banked fire variety.

And I kept wondering about exactly what happened in the way-back-when. It was clearly more traumatic for her than for him, but something happened. What was it?

The romance part of this romance needed more sparks somewhere, even if we don’t witness the actual fire.

Sunrise Point

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

Sunrise Point by Robyn Carr was my first trip to the lovely town of Virgin River in northern California. But I don’t think it will be my last. Not just because the town was beautiful, but because the people who live there are ones I’d like to see again, to catch up on their stories. And because the love stories that seem to happen there, like Sunrise Point, involve terrific characters and great storytelling.

Nora Crane is a single mother with two very young daughters. Her daughters’ sperm donor (father is so the wrong word) abandoned her in Virgin River in a house that not only wasn’t ready for winter, it wasn’t even fit for habitation. The whole town pitched in to help Nora get by.

But Nora wants to stand on her own two feet. The school of hard knocks is a rough teacher, but she’s learned better than to be dependent on anyone ever again. She was young and stupid when she dropped out of college to follow a minor league ballplayer who ended up a drug dealer, but she’s not stupid anymore. Now she’s still young, but she’s pragmatic as she can be.

And she needs to work to support herself and her girls. Harvest time at Tom Cavanaugh’s orchard is the best paying work she can get now that school is out for the summer and her teaching assistant job is temporarily over.

It doesn’t matter that the orchard is over 3 miles outside of town, that she has no car, and that Tom Cavanaugh is ruggedly handsome, overly opinionated…and only hired her because his grandmother made him take pity on her situation. Nora will prove to herself, and Tom, that she can learn the back-breaking, callous-making hard work of picking apples.

The thing is, Nora is all wrong about the reason Tom didn’t want to hire her. Oh yes, he’s worried about her learning the job, but everyone is new once. Tom’s problem is that he finds Nora much too attractive, and he doesn’t want to get himself involved with someone who works for him. And he’s just back from serving with the Marines in Afghanistan. He’s thinking about settling down, but he’s not ready for a ready-made family either.

Nora is both an employee, and a single mother. He should be declaring her completely off-limits.

And Nora has already made some seriously bad decisions about men once in her life. Getting involved with her boss is all kinds of bad.

But the heart wants what the heart wants. The head can be so totally wrong about these things. Especially in Virgin River.

Escape Rating B+: Watching Nora and Tom court and spark is the fun part of this story. When they are thinking and not feeling, they think they are wrong for each other. But when they simply interact, everyone around them can see they are so very right for each other. It just takes them a long time to see it. Their obliviousness is funny, and almost heartbreaking. The wrong choice does loom over them for a while.

There are two sets of background characters. The set that are part and parcel of Nora and Tom’s story are terrific. I’m not sure there is anyone who wouldn’t want Tom’s grandmother Maxie for their own. Or at least to borrow her for awhile. She’s marvelous. The story of Nora’s childhood, and the resolution, that part introduces some good things as well.

The other piece of the story is probably the setup for the next book, with some characters who had their HEA in a previous story and one new one. Because this was my first trip to Virgin River, I was a little bit lost in the parts with Luke, Jack and Cooper. But I think Cooper’s story might be the next book, since Luke (Temptation Ridge) and Jack (Virgin River) have already had their stories.

Speaking of temptation, I’m tempted to go back to find out exactly what their stories are. Before book 20 in this series comes out. I want to catch up with everyone!

For more of my thoughts on Sunrise Point, check out Book Lovers Inc.

 

Wanted: Handsome Alien Abductor

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

Every Star Trek fan has wanted Scotty to “beam them up”.

But Amber doesn’t want an engineer, she wants an alpha male with the body of a Viking hero and the same interest in history that she has. In fact, when Amber puts her wish list together in Myra Nour’s Wanted: Handsome Alien Abductor, the title pretty much sums up her perfect man.

Sounds like an impossible dream, and that’s just what Amber figures it is, a dream. Especially when her best friend Sarah tells her that she found her husband by praying to some Goddess in the middle-of-nowhere South America.

But what does Amber have to lose? South America is a nice place to vacation. Isn’t it?

So when she visits Sarah’s Goddess, and makes her offering, she expects nothing. Still, she dreams up her ideal man. That alpha male explorer, space traveler, historian, and oh yeah, alien.

Then she has the best erotic dream she’s ever had, and the star of the show is her perfect man. And is he ever perfect! In every possible way.

Then she wakes up. On his space ship. And discovers that her fantastic erotic dream–really happened.

Ryja travels the galaxy, and aboard his ship he has a time machine. He’s come to Earth to study its history. He couldn’t be a more ideal man for Amber, except for one major problem. His mission will only last for just a few short months, and then he’ll be travelling on. Amber isn’t looking for a fling, she’s playing for keeps.

Can this intergalactic love match find happiness among the stars?

Escape Rating B-: This isn’t so much science fiction romance as it is wish-fulfillment romance. Considered in that light, it is a blast of a good time. Amber dreams up a perfect man, and gets one perfect for her, with all the coolest toys imaginable.

I liked how the author dealt with the science fiction geek-speak, by not doing it. Ryja was not an engineer, so he didn’t pretend. Most of us don’t know how a TV works, we just click the remote. Most people wouldn’t know the ins and outs of their technology, they’d just use it. This kept from drowning the reader in polysyllabic pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo and went straight to the “good stuff”.

And it was very good stuff.

 

North of Need

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

Humans have personified the great forces of nature since mankind (and womankind) first created fire. The winds howling outside of those early cave-dwellings must have seemed like gods…and so some of the world’s most fascinating and enduring myths were born.

Zephyrus, the west wind, Eurus the East Wind and Notus, the South Wind are three of these, but the greatest and most feared is Boreas, the North Wind. Boreas is feared because the North Wind brings Winter.

In North of Need, the first of Laura Kaye’s Hearts of the Anemoi series, Megan Snow has gone north to face the heart of winter alone. Megan believes that she needs to face Christmas, and the second anniversary of her young husband’s death, alone. Alone in the isolated cabin where they shared their love, and their all too few Christmases.

Out of a need to escape the confines of the cabin, the walls that are closing in, Megan goes out into the snow and builds a snow man, and a snow woman, and last, a snow child. Finished, she stares at her handiwork, and realizes what she has unconsciously done. She’s built a vision in snow of what she can never have in real life–the Snow Family. Her husband is dead and she is alone.

Megan breaks down and sobs, wrapping her arms around the snowman, her tears fusing her to its solid snow body. Tearing herself away leaves a snow burn on her cheek.

Stumbling into the cabin after her emotional storm, Megan crashes into sleep as a blizzard descends on the isolated area. She wakes to find a man on her doorstep. She doesn’t want to give up her grief-stricken isolation, but the man will freeze to death before he reaches the next cabin, if he can even find another shelter in the white-out. She must take the stranger in, and hope for the best.

What she finds even more strange is that the man on her doorstep has no shoes, but is wearing the clothes that she used to “dress” the snowman.

Owen Winters is the snowman. And he will be again, if Megan doesn’t grab this chance at love. Owen is one of the Anemoi, one of those primal forces, an agent of the North Wind. And he has one precious chance, a few brief days, to convince Megan to fall in love with him.

The West Wind is coming, bringing the thaw. When the snow thaws, Owen will be gone, unless Megan can commit to him first. But love in the face of death is the one thing that Megan fears above all. She’s loved and lost before, and she’s not in the least bit sure it’s better than never having loved at all.

Will Megan’s heart thaw first, or will the snow?

Escape Rating A: Now I understand what all the fuss was about! Besides the fact that the use of Greek mythology was awesome (Boreas hasn’t been this much fun since he was used as Bigby Wolf’s father in Fables) the metaphor of winter for grief was done just right. It’s a trope that can easily be overplayed, but Kaye went just far enough, and then turned it on its head by having Owen and Megan have so much fun in their winter sports. For Owen, wintertime equals playtime, and he makes Megan see it too.

Owen has a much harder time getting Megan to trust him, especially when he starts by understandably not revealing his true nature. But his courtship, and the building of their frienship, is what makes the story so incredibly good. It helps that the romance part of this paranormal romance is both sweet and hot.

West of Want, book 2 of Hearts of the Anemoi, is coming on July 10, 2012 (excerpts and swag giveaway post here). Book 3, South of Surrender, not until December, 2012. For the grand finale, East of Ecstasy, I’m going to have to wait until April 2013. Just in time for my next birthday.

 

Skies of Fire

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

If the British Admiralty is sending airships to fight the Hapsburgs, then this must be steampunk. And damned fine steampunk indeed!

Zoë Archer’s latest book, Skies of Fire, is that steampunk, the first tale of The Ether Chronicles. It’s that “ether” that powers those airships. Along with something, or rather someone, who has been transformed into a “Man O’War”. And no, Ms. Archer was not referring to the horse.

In this alternate-19th century, a scientist has discovered a rare element: Telumium. Telumium is amazing. One of its byproducts is ether, which powers the airships, and ether rifles, and ether-based lights. Another, even more amazing, property of Telumium is that it can be bonded to a human being, creating a super-human, a Man O’War. A Man O’War’s strength is what literally powers his airship.

Christopher Redmond captains HMS Demeter, and his small gunship is trapped and looking for a place to repair behind enemy lines when he catches the glint of an SOS from a British agent. Literally a glint: the signal is being sent by mirror flashes, and only his enhanced sight could have caught it.

Even while hiding from the enemy, Redmond is duty-bound to retrieve that agent, so he drops the jollyboat with a small crew. He puts himself on that jollyboat, knowing the agent must be in desperate straights.

The agent is desperately in need of rescue. And is the last person Christopher Redmond expected to find in the Carpathian Mountains. Or anywhere in his life again. Louisa Shaw is the only woman he ever loved. But when he asked her to marry him, three years ago, she left him, without a work, without a note. He underwent the transformation to become a Man O’War not long after. But he never stopped loving her, even while he sometimes hated her.

Christopher always knew Louise was a member of British Intelligence. Even that she was one of their best field agents. He just wasn’t expecting her here.

And Louisa wasn’t expecting Christopher, either. She still missed him. She always had. But he had wanted a wife, even though she had told him from the very beginning that she would not marry. She had panicked, and run.

But she followed his career and had even memorized the layout of his ship. She just hadn’t expected him to be the one who rescued her. Hadn’t expected him to have changed so much, and yet, not changed at all.

They had to work together, in spite of the lingering wounds and the growing tension between them. Louisa held vital intelligence about a munitions factory behind enemy lines. A factory that must be destroyed at all costs.

But first, it has to be found.

In the midst of searching for that factory, can Christopher and Louisa find their way back to each other?

Escape Rating A-: It was great to see some steampunk with a British background for a change! There’s been a recent run of Wild West steampunk (cowpunk!) that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, but the change of scene was good.

The relationship between Christopher and Louisa isn’t just hot (although it is) but is also believable. The way the author makes them fight through their bitterness and betrayal, fight each other, and work so hard for their reconciliation is intense. Their second chance has to be hard-won, and readers need to see it to buy into it.

I was dying to figure out where in the alternative timeline this war fit in, and couldn’t quite figure it out. Drove me crazy. Is this an alternate to the Crimean War, making it the 1850’s? When did the telumium discovery taken place? Inquiring minds get caught on these niggly details.

I read this all in one gulp. I wish the next book in the series, Night of Fire by Ms. Archer’s husband and fellow romance writer Nico Rosso, were available now instead of in July.