Tag: Nico Rosso

The Sunday Post AKA What’s On My (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand? 2-17-13

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Book Lovers Inc.> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

This is Presidents Day weekend in the U.S. We are not celebrating the vampire-hunting prowess of Abraham Lincoln. (Officially, it turns out we really are still celebrating George Washington’s birthday, in spite of the date gerrymandering.)

We are celebrating the U.S. Federal government’s desire to provide 3-day weekends to as many people as possible, in the hopes of encouraging tourism. I don’t know how well that’s working out.

Some of us have Monday off to celebrate this slightly strange amalgam of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday (February 12, 1809) and George Washington’s birthday (February 22, 1732). Or as my father used to call the latter, “Birthington’s Washday”.

It’s a long slog until the next holiday, Memorial Day at the end of May. At least that’s one we almost all get.

But let’s celebrate this past week first. What happened last week?

Celebrating Saint Valentine Blog Hop (ends tonight!)
B Review: Lady In Deed by Ann Montclair + Giveaway (ends 2/22)
B Review: Iron Guns, Blazing Hearts by Heather Massey
A Review: A Devil’s Touch by Victoria Vane
A+ Review: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Stacking the Shelves (34)

This week I will be part of the tour for Holding Out for a Hero, the superhero anthology with stories from Christine Bell and Ella Dane, Tamara Morgan, Nico Rosso and Adrien-Luc Sanders. I’ll be reviewing two of the stories here, and two of the stories at Book Lovers Inc. on Friday. I’m also planning to have an interview with Nico Rosso here on Wednesday.

I also had a chance to review The Dragon Healer, one of the Dragon Knights series by Bianca D’Arc for Library Journal. Since I got book 1.5, it gave me an excuse to give longer reviews here at Reading Reality.

There will be other surprises this week, so stay tuned and see what pops up!

A Labor of Love: Picking the Best Ebook Romances of 2012

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | best book lists

It looks like an annual tradition. Well, I’ve done it two years in a row, so I’m hopeful.

One of the pleasures of being a book reviewer and a librarian is that I review ebooks for Library Journal, one of the trade publications that serves, well, of course, libraries. For the past not quite year and a half, Library Journal has been doing their damnedest to bridge the gap between the sheer number of ebook romances being published and the desire to get some reviews into libraries’ regular workflow. Ebooks are a hot topic in libraries all the way around, but figuring out how the library should spend limited dollars is still not easy.

I applaud the effort, and I’m very proud to be a part of it. In sort of a reverse of full-disclosure, no, I’m not paid to say this. I’m not paid for my reviews at LJ. It really is a labor of love. Sort of like book blogging.

The Library Journal Best Ebook Romances of 2012 column was published last week. With a much better picture of me and everything. It still looks cool. (Even my mom was impressed). But LJ always has to alphabetize everything. Librarians do that. My original list went this way:

Knox, Ruthie. About Last Night. Loveswept: Random. eISBN: 9780345535160. EPUB $2.99. Contemporary Romance

About Last Night was my starred review in LJ all the way back in April, and I never forgot it. Ruthie Knox’s contemporary romance is funny and charming (also gloriously hot) about a bad girl trying to be good and a good man who needs to let his bad side out to play a little more often than his straight-laced upper crust family can tolerate. Cath, the good-bad girl, also has one of those dream jobs, assistant to a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Knox had me at “hand-knitted straight jacket”. Knox writes a terrific “sex into love” romance that will make readers laugh out loud. And finish in one sitting.

Vane, Victora. The Devil DeVere series: #1 A Wild Night’s Bride, #2 The Virgin Huntress, #3 The Devil You Know, #4 The Devil’s Match. Breathless Press. EPUB $3.49 each Historical Romance

The Devil DeVere series is a variation of the Rake’s Progress, or the Rake’s Reformation, except that is doesn’t start with said Rake as the main character. A device that was amazingly clever on Vane’s part and allowed her to circle in on DeVere without revealing too much initially. In the first two books, he’s the puppetmaster, re-arranging his friends’ lives. But in the background the reader catches hints that there’s more to him than the debauched reprobate we see. By the time we find out his story, we’re invested. The series is erotic and sexy and sometimes the reader wants to shake various characters until their teeth rattle, but it is absolutely marvelous. This one should be read with bonbons. And a fan!

Archer, Zoe and Rosso, Nico. The Ether Chronicles: #1 Skies of Fire (eISBN 9780062109149), #3 Skies of Steel (eISBN 9780062109156) by Zoe Archer, #2 Night of Fire (eISBN 9780062201089); #4 Night of Steel (eISBN 9780062201102)by Nico Rosso. Avon Impulse. EPUB $1.99 each Steampunk Romance

A world war, in the years just before we fought ours, but different. Because this world war uses a metal named telumium, and a fuel made from soya called tetrol. But oddly enough, some of the same players as “our” world war. So typical of steampunk, familiar, yet not. Airships, but also air-bikes, air-trikes, and air-horses. Air-horses! And something that’s unique to this steampunk world, the Man O’War, which is definitely not a horse, but a cyborg controlling an airship, and seemingly vice-versa.  But because we have a world war, we have spies, and secret ops, and all the romantic suspense possibilities that go along with that. Because it’s a “world” war, also all the options for world-spanning action. So far it’s been military operations in Europe, town-killers and ether-powered cowboys in the U.S. West, and rogues bringing “modern” technology to the Middle Eastern tribes. Indiana Jones had nothing on that one.

Pape, Cindy Spencer. Moonlight & Mechanicals. (Gaslight Chronicles, Bk. 4). 176 pages. eISBN 9781426894527. EPUB $4.99. Steampunk Romance

Spencer Pape’s Gaslight Chronicles (Steam & Sorcery, Photographs & Phantoms, Kilts & Kraken) are set in a steampunk world that deviates from ours at two key points; Charles Babbage’s difference engine was built (and worked!) and the Knights of the Round Table were not only real, but their descendants are still defending the monarchy, and by extension the realm, in this alternate Victorian England. In Moonlight & Mechanicals, we have possibility the ultimate steampunk romance, between a werewolf police detective and a female engineer who grew up fighting vampires. The detective, is, of course, a member of the Knights. And the heroine has had a crush on him ever since he saved her life. He just believes that he isn’t capable of being a family man. She’s just planning to tinker with him until she proves different. And they save the Queen!

Heldt, John A. The Mine (Northwest Passage Bk. 1) John A. Heldt Publisher. 290 pages. EPUB $0.99 TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE

The Mine is one of those stories that sneaks up on you and sweeps you off your feet. It reminded me a lot of Jack Finney’s classic Time and Again, in its sense of a man falling in love, not just with a woman, but also with a time, a place, and a way of life. Joel Smith starts the story as a cocky boy/man on a last adventure before college graduation. He bumps his head in an abandoned mine and wakes up in 1941, in America’s last golden summer before Pearl Harbor. He’s afraid to change things, but he has to find a way to survive in a world he only knows from history books and baseball statistics. Thinking he can’t go back, he falls in love and makes a life. Then he discovers that he can go back, and is faced with a terrible dilemma. He can leave behind all that he has come to love, or stay, knowing that if he does he may change history. This one haunts.

As usual, I started out by picking five, and snuck my way into choosing eleven! Way to go! And since you could say that Spencer Pape’s entire Gaslight Chronicles are included, a case could be made for calling this list fourteen. But who’s counting?

The fun part of creating this list is looking back at everything I reviewed for the year, at Reading Reality, at Book Lovers Inc., and at Library Journal. The difficult part was not being able to include anything that wasn’t at least sort of a love story, and that wasn’t an ebook, or primarily an ebook (there are print versions of Archer and Rosso’s Ether Chronicles, but most people will get the ebooks).

I’m just going to have to do a less restrictive “best of the year” list in December.

Review: Skies of Steel by Zoe Archer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Format read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook, Mass Market paperback
Genre: steampunk romance
Series: The Ether Chronicles #3
Length: 100 pages
Publisher: Avon Impulse
Date Released: October 9, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, All Romance

In the world of The Ether Chronicles, the Mechanical War rages on, and appearances are almost always deceiving . . . 

The prim professor
Daphne Carlisle may be a scholar, but she’s far more comfortable out in the field than lost in a stack of books. Still, when her parents are kidnapped by a notorious warlord, she knows she’ll need more than quick thinking if she is to reach them in time. Daphne’s only hope for getting across enemy territory is an airship powered and navigated by Mikhail Denisov, a rogue Man O’ War who is as seductive as he is untrustworthy.

The jaded mercenary
Mikhail will do anything for the right price, and he’s certain he has this mission—and Daphne—figured out: a simple job and a beautiful but sheltered Englishwoman. But as they traverse the skies above the Mediterranean and Arabia, Mikhail learns the fight ahead is anything but simple, and his lovely passenger is not entirely what she seems. The only thing Mikhail is certain of is their shared desire—both unexpected and dangerous.

The Mechanical War is a damn big war. If the first “world war” were fought, just a bit earlier, and with “ether” instead of guns and tanks (and still a few horses), would you get something like the war that Archer and Rosso have envisioned in their Ether Chronicles?

In this third glimpse into their fascinating construct of man/machines, airships and ether-powered horses (after Skies of Fire (review) and Night of Fire (review)) we see a totally different place and perspective. Skies of Fire showed the good guys (the Brits) and the perspective of those who serve her. Night of Fire switched to the Western U.S., but again, showed us folks wearing uniforms and/or badges fighting the good fight.

Skies of Steel gives us rebels. Han Solo as a bionic rebel and completely mercenary Man O’War helping a female Indiana Jones to ransom her parents from the desert warlord who kidnapped them.

Let  me explain…in this steampunk universe, the process that makes a man into a Man O’War, a man/machine, infuses his body with the metal telumium, and permanently bonds him to his airship. And absolutely vice-versa. So when Mikhail Mikhailovich Denisov goes rogue from the Russian fleet, his airship goes with him. He’s not the only rogue Man O’War, but governments don’t like to talk about their rogues. (Mikhail is also the man with the mohawk on the cover of the book. He likes the style. Really.)

Daphne Carlisle is an anthropologist who prefers studying cultures in the field to the academy. She may look like a simple academic, but she’s anything but. She’s equally deadly with a gun, or a deception.

Daphne deceives Mikhail over and over. Only one thing remains true. She will say, or do, absolutely anything, even the seemingly impossible, to save her parents. After the first lie is revealed, he should abandon her, take his ship, and leave. There is no profit in this fool’s venture for a mercenary.

But he stays and helps her anyway. With all her deceits, with all her tricks, Daphne has done one true thing. She has kept him from being bored and lonely. Her true quest to rescue her parents challenges him to find his own true heart, if it still exists.

After all, what mercenary would keep going on a job with no profit? Unless he’s pursuing something completely different?

Escape Rating B+: The terrific part of all the books in this series so far have been the two leads, and Mikhail and Daphne are no exceptions. They are fantastic. Mikhail’s increasing ennui, his boredom, his heartbreak at the loss of his family and purpose in life, while still feeling oh so responsible for his ship and crew is intense. He can’t let anyone down, but he’s already let himself down, and he’s not sure what he’s living for.

Daphne is desperate and courageous in her desperation. She doesn’t fit into the academic life, she belongs in the field. She’s so capable! She never needs to be rescued, what she needs is a partner.

The rescue of Daphne’s parents, all the different tasks Daphne and Mikhail had to perform, that was fantastic. (It also would have made an awesome video game!) You could feel them knitting together as a team.

But what did bother me a bit was the insta-connection in the beginning of the story. We never do find out why. They fall into instant rapport with each other. The other stories in this series were “second-chance at love” scenarios, where this one seemed to take the insta-connection as a short cut. (Maybe it’s the Han and Indy thing. He fell in love with himself after all!)

But I still raced through the book and can’t wait for the next one in the series, Nights of Steel. Next month.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Night of Fire by Nico Rosso

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

The Ether Chronicles is a cooperative steampunk venture, or is that adventure, between writers (and real-life spouses) Zoe Archer and Nico Rosso.

The first book in the series, Skies of Fire, took place in more traditional steampunk territory, assuming there is such a thing as tradition when it comes to a genre as “new-fangled” as steampunk. It’s set on the European side of this alternate, steam- and “ether”-powered world war and it’s written by Ms. Archer, as will be the third book.

Mr. Rosso is responsible for Night of Fire, set in the U.S. West. Less traditional, not just for steampunk, but in general. The West of the late eighteenth century was the frontier, with wide-open spaces and people who didn’t want to be hemmed in.

There’s a war going on, and men are called away from their homes to fight against the Hapsburg enemy. Just as happened in real history, particularly in World War II, when the men are called away in large numbers, women fill roles that used to be reserved for men. And some of them find that their new roles suit them much better than the ones they would have traditionally found.

And some men think that this new assertiveness fits those women better than the old traditional roles ever did.

The  Army has also given Tom Knox a new role in life. In Thornville, he was a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. The US Army has made him not just a soldier, but a leader. It’s given him purpose and responsibility. The Army doesn’t care where he came from, only how he conducts himself. And he’s not a boy any more.

The war has brought him near enough to Thornville to visit. To find out what happened to the girl he left behind. Rosa Campos’ father ran him out of town, said Tom wasn’t good enough for his daughter. And he was right, then.

Now is different.

Now, Rosa is the Sheriff of Thornville. She’s the only one man enough for the job, in spite of her father’s protests. The first thing Tom sees when he rides back into town on his ether-powered “horse” is Rosa fighting off a band of roughnecks, who aren’t just hooligans testing the “lady lawman”.

They’re the front for a completely different threat, one that’s going to literally gobble up the entire town, if Tom and Rosa don’t set aside three years of simmering resentments and disappointments and face the threat together, instead of fighting each other.

About that simmering…the fire they sparked between them before Tom left still burns as hot as ever, but they can’t afford the distraction. Distraction will get them, and everyone around them killed.

But once they defeat their mutual enemy, if they survive, can they find any feelings left for each other beyond lust, disappointment and pain? Did they lose their chance at happiness by not fighting for it hard enough, all those years ago?

Escape Rating A-: There are three stories going on in Night of Fire, and all of them are terrific. One is the war, and for background on the war with the Hapsburgs, read Skies of Fire by Zoe Archer first. It’s tremendous fun, especially if you love steampunk. The information on what ether and telumium (the mineral that makes it all possible) are is there.

The second story is the Western “save the town” story. The sheriff needs to fight off the evil mining corporation that planning to swallow up the good ranching land and the good ranching community. This tale stands the usual trope on its head by having the corporation plan to literally swallow the town. Only in SF or fantasy (or one of their cousins like steampunk)!

Third, of course, is the romance. Tom and Rosa are doing the second-chance dance. They loved before and war has given them another try. They’ve grown up; they weren’t the people they were before. They didn’t fight hard enough before, they weren’t ready. This time, the stakes are much, much higher, but they’re much stronger. But they’ve got a lot of internal resentments to overcome, as well as the obvious external forces arrayed against them. It’s one hell of a fight.

And I wish the story had been a bit longer. This was an awful lot of stuff to pack into 100 pages. I loved it. I would have loved it more had there been a little more of it. Which means I can’t wait for the next one.

 

What’s On My (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand? AKA The Sunday Post 7-1-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Except for the “Rockets’ red glare”, it’s going to be a fairly quiet week here at Reading Reality.

And that’s a good thing.

About that “Rockets’ red glare” thing, it’s a quote from Francis Scott Key’s memorable but nearly un-singable Star Spangled Banner, and from one of the peculiarly high-pitched bits at that.

The U.S. Independence Day Holiday, July 4, is this Wednesday. Strange, but there don’t seem to be any tours scheduled this week. I wonder why that is?

There’s no Ebook Review Central this week. The whole U.S. is slacking this week. Including yours truly. ERC will be back on Monday, July 9 with Dreamspinner’s May titles.

I’m going to take this opportunity to catch up from the great “sick out” I had last week.

There is plenty scheduled for the week of July 9. It’s really a go-go-go week!

Looking forward, as I always do on these Sunday posts, I have tours scheduled for Hope’s Betrayal by Grace Elliot on Tuesday, July 10. This regency takes place in the “mother country” of England. So fitting the week after Independence Day.

 

 

And speaking of historicals, Thursday, July 12 the tour books are Forgotten Memories and The Dressmaker’s Dilemma by Theresa Stillwagon. These are U.S. western romances, but not your typical westerns. The setting is a ghost town, and the ghosts are part of the story.

 

There are a few, what am I saying, there are always more than a few, books on my lists that really caught my attention from NetGalley and Edelweiss (and Samhain) that are coming out in the next two weeks.

One is very special. Everyone tried to get an ARC of Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness early, because her debut last year, The Discovery of Witches, was, well, such a fantastic discovery. But her publisher didn’t release the ARC until after BEA. (She also did signings at ALA). The publication date is July 10, and I have to read this. The early reviews are awesome.

Steampunk is coming on strong early in July. Archer’s Lady, the next book in Moira Rogers’ Bloodhounds series is out on July 3. God Save the Queen by Kate Locke is the first book in her new series The Immortal Empire, and it also comes out on July 3. This is one they ran out of at her signing at ALA. Nico Rosso’s Night of Fire (Ether Chronicles #2) is out at the end of the month. Like I said, July is a big month for steampunk!

Steampunk, is so appropriate for July. It is steamy hot here in Atlanta. Record setting hot (108ºF yesterday). Maybe I can just sit here with a cool glass of iced tea and a good book (or 10)!

What’s your favorite way of keeping cool on these hot summer days?