Stacking the Shelves (67)

Posted on November 16, 2013November 16, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

For all lovers of Science Fiction Romance out there, be sure to take a look at the inaugural issue of Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly. It’s that awesome cover over on the right by the multi-talented Kaz Augustin, who is also the Chief Editor. If you like SFR, I’m sure you’ll find a few more books to add to your TBR pile.

But if SFR doesn’t light your rocket engine, maybe some of these will appeal?

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00071]

For Review:
At Any Price (Gaming the System #1) by Brenna Aubrey
Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1) by Jenn Bennett
Chaos Bound (Chronicles from the Applecross #2) by Rebekah Turner
Christmas in Dogtown by Suzanne Johnson
Hard As You Can (Hard Ink #2) by Laura Kaye
Hope Flames (Hope #1) by Jaci Burton
Operation: Saving Daniel by Nina Croft
Parts & Wreck (Parts Department #1) by Mark Henry

Borrowed from the Library:
London Falling (London Falling #1) by Paul Cornell

Guest Post by Author Sonya Clark on Trancehacking + Giveaway

Posted on November 14, 2013November 13, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | ebook giveaway> Guest Posts

Today I’d like to welcome Sonya Clark, the author of the totally awesome blend of urban fantasy/paranormal/dystopian romance that is Trancehack (reviewed here).

Trancehacking
by Sonya Clark

Trancehack is set in a dark future where witches are identified at birth and sent to live in urban zones with no rights of citizenship. The reason they were sent to urban zones specifically is because of the lack of understanding of magic by Normals who made the laws. Normals believed that being forced to live in an urban environment would mute the nature-oriented magic practiced by witches. What they didn’t know is that magic in this world is about more than fire, earth, air, and water. For some witches in the Magic Born world, it’s also about neon, concrete, cyberspace, and music.

When I decided I wanted to play with ideas on urban magic, I knew I didn’t want to just transplant the usual stuff encountered in fiction into city environs. I wanted to see if I could stretch my own ideas about magic, where to find it, and how to use it. The first thing I did was figure out basic correspondences: fire = neon, earth = concrete and steel, air = cyberspace, and water = music. I played around with ways the city elements could be used. One in particular really set off my imagination: the idea of using astral projection to enter cyberspace. This is where the book gets its name – trancehacking.

I’d already drawn from one childhood influence in creating the Magic Born world – Blade Runner. Both the movie’s future-noir sensibility and the sprawling metropolis that is almost a character unto itself were in the back of my mind while writing parts of Trancehack. When I started thinking about what it would be like to travel through cyberspace as just an entity of consciousness, temporarily apart from the body, I thought of another movie from childhood – Tron. I’ll be the first one to admit Tron hasn’t aged as well as Blade Runner, but both movies left a mark on my young imagination. When I found out the sequel to Tron did not involve exploring the internet, I lost interest in the movie and never saw it. It’s just as well because then I was able to let my imagination run wild. Here’s the first time witch Calla Vesper trancehacks in the book:

“Enchantress of Numbers, guide my journey,” she intoned. With a push of her will she sent magic into her wand and from there flowing into the cable. While Calla’s body sat on the hard floor of a filthy abandoned building, her consciousness slipped into cyberspace with practiced ease. Familiar blue-white light formed at the edge of the darkness. Dots and lines not unlike the city lights at night glowed brighter as she settled more fully into the different environment.

The small handful of witches like Calla who are able to trancehack have to hide their abilities from Magic Born and Normal alike, lest they wind up lab rats or worse. Even so, they’re able to do a lot of good for the Magic Born by hacking for information, as well as doing other things with their unique gifts. The Magic Born are up against bigotry, poverty, and the law itself, so they need all the advantages they can get.

And I have to admit, combining magic and technology was a lot of fun, too.

About Sonya Clark
Sonya Clark grew up a military brat and now lives in Tennessee with her husband and daughter. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance with a heavy helping of magic and lots of music for inspiration. Learn more at her website. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

GIVEAWAY

Sonya is kindly giving away a digital copy of Trancehack. To enter, use the Rafflecopter below.

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Review: Trancehack by Sonya Clark

Posted on November 14, 2013November 13, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Dystopian, Science Fiction Romance
Series: Magic Born #1
Length: 231 pages
Publisher: Carina Press
Date Released: October 28, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, All Romance

It’s 2065. Those born with magic abilities live in government-run zones, without rights or freedoms. Fear of magic created this segregated world and fear keeps it intact.

A high-profile murder brings Detective Nathan Perez to Magic Born Zone 13. He’s had little experience with the Magic Born and isn’t sure what to expect during his first encounter with a witch, but he never thought he’d be so drawn to her.

Trancehacker Calla Vesper uses magic to break into computers and aid the Magic Born underground. She has no interest in helping a cop, even if he is smoking-hot, but money’s tight and Nate offers a tidy amount for help navigating the Zone. Calla’s determined to keep it all business, but sparks start flying before the investigation even gets started.

When Calla’s trancehacking and Nathan’s investigation uncover a conspiracy, Calla becomes a target. Nate can protect her by keeping her role a secret—but then who will protect Nate?

My Review:

I fell in love with the world created by Sonya Clark in Trancehack to the point where I’m having a difficult time reviewing it because of the sheer number of resonance images it carried for me. Clark’s imagery of the magic users’ ghetto, or FreakTown, borrowed from so many awesome stories and historical settings, even some she didn’t intend, AND added a sweet and white-hot love story like a cherry on top.

Okay, what is this thing, anyway? We have a dystopian society that it turns out human beings mostly made instead of an apocalypse raining down from above.

Even more screwed up, somehow “magic born” started springing up in the population, and then getting segregated into ghettos by mandatory DNA testing. Half a century later, you get the world of Trancehack.

They really are using magic, no joke. Lighting fires, playing with electricity, healing, and some other very interesting talents. But the dystopia comes from the reaction to the people who use the magic.

Religious zealots in the US are the ones who created the anti-magic laws and the ghettos. And guess what? The US became such fanatics that other countries decided not to have much to do with us after that. Even more interesting, US students who studied abroad stopped coming back, so they clamped down on US students studying abroad.

Repressive society much?

It gets worse. All children get tested for the magic DNA. Any found with the gene are automatically taken away from their parents and their records expunged. There is no appeal. Think of what that does not just to the infants who are abandoned inside the magic zones, but also to the young couples who live in fear of having babies with magic and seeing them taken away.

The cost to society as a whole.

Now we have a story. Nathan Perez is a cop who knows he’s a potential scapegoat. An unregistered magic user has just murdered a prominent research physician. There are three very interesting facts about the late Dr. Forbes: 1) he was researching the production of the illegal street drug Nightshade, 2) he was infamous for being responsible for the testing that removed magic-born infants from their parents and 3) he was best-friends with influential Senator John Beckwith, who wants the man’s murder handled quickly and quietly. Oh, and there is no such thing as an unregistered magic-born, so all the crime scene tests must be mistaken.

At least until all the people involved with ever having seen or heard of those “mistaken” tests start turning up dead.

Escape Rating A: It’s the worldbuilding that made Trancehack so much of a pleasure for me. I kept hearing the echo of Katherine Kurtz’ ancient Deryni crying that “the humans kill what they do not understand” because part of that felt right. The non-Magic Born were afraid of the Magic Born power, so they hemmed it in and legislated it out of sight. They feared what they couldn’t understand so they attempted to control it.

It also reminded me very much of the Mage Towers (for that read Mage Prisons) in Dragon Age: Origins video game world. Again, a world where magic power is feared so much that mages are locked away, in that world by an omnipotent church that takes magic-using children from their parents.

There is also an intentional parallel to the Underground Railroad of U.S history. The Magic-Born may not be slaves, but the restrictions under which they live are designed to make them feel less than human.

Calla Vesper embodies a lot of the conditions under which the Magic-Born live. Not just by being Magic-Born, but by knowing who her birth parents were. She has created someone different, but she is able to visualize exactly what might have been, and so can we.

Nate and Calla’s relationship smacks of Romeo and Juliet, but they are both adults and well aware of the potential consequences. They see the doom going in, they just choose to ignore it for awhile. When doom catches up, they keep running.

And we have the “good cop investigating corrupt society” case in this mix too. Clark keeps a surprising number of plates spinning in the air, and does it in a way that kept this reader enthralled from beginning to end.

Must be magic.

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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: Highland Shifter by Catherine Bybee

Posted on November 13, 2013November 11, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: Paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: Time travel romance
Series: MacCoinnich Time Travels #4
Length: 296 pages
Publisher: Self-published
Date Released: February 12, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Helen Adams has a knack for finding lost objects, but the Simon McAllister she finds isn’t what she expected. The missing California teen is now a grown man—a kilted, sword wielding, Highland warrior.
A mysterious Druid book and Helen’s sixth sense send her to Scotland in search of a missing boy. After being attacked by strange men dressed in medieval garb, a handsome, desirable hero answering to the boy’s name rescues her. No one is more surprised than she to find herself in sixteenth century Scotland. Unable to deny the reality of time travel, Helen discovers smoldering passion with a man destined to leave her.
Simon has lived his Druid life in two very different worlds, two vastly different times, and when Helen practically lands in his lap, he knows his life is about to change forever. There are enemies in California lying in wait for her, and an army in Scotland closing in on his family. Simon is the only person who can protect her. But when she learns his most guarded secret, will she still want him? Can Helen love a Highland Shifter?

My Review:

The time traveling Highlanders are back! More accurately I couldn’t resist the time-travel crack that this series represents and went back before the second trilogy was finished.

There’s probably a cliffhanger in my immediate future. I’ll suffer on womanfully when the time comes. But not just yet!

The MacCoinnichs, besides having a nearly unspellable name, are a family of time-traveling Druids in the 16th century. We were introduced to them in the Vows trilogy; Binding Vows, Silent Vows, and Redeeming Vows and at the end, they had defeated the evil Druid Grainna who had traveled from the 21st century to the 16th. Along the way of the story the MacCoinnichs themselves had traveled back and forth in time more than once, and had not just brought a whole bunch of people back in time, but by doing so had created more than few missing persons cases for the 21st century cops.

Also along that way they had managed to enlighten a few people about who their ancestors really were and that well, “the truth is out there”. More like “back there” in time.

And just because Grainna was defeated, doesn’t mean that evil is permanently vanquished. There’s always someone else willing to be the next evil. Evil is just like that.

But Highland Shifter begins as one of those missing persons cases. When Lizzy MacAllister and her son Simon choose to stay in the 16th century at the end of Redeeming Vows, they were “missing” as far as the 21st century was concerned. There’s not much attention paid to Lizzy’s case, but Simon was 14, and missing children are taken more seriously. More seriously than missing adults, anyway. Simon’s picture made it onto a few milk cartons, at least.

Only a couple of years in the 21st century after Simon’s disappearance, Helen Adams discovers a Celtic amulet in a second hand store and purchases it on a whim. It seems old but not terribly valuable. However, Helen has a “gift” that regularly leads her into finding rare and/or valuable treasures, and that gift is what led her into purchasing the amulet.

The amulet leads her to a book that shows her drawings of herself in 16th century Highland dress with the amulet around her neck, side-by-side with a kilted warrior. It also leads her to research about the disappearance of one teenaged boy named Simon MacAllister. Even though she’s certain that her “strong intuition” is sending her on a wild goose chase, she follows her hunch from California to the Scottish Highlands. A hike in the countryside sends her straight to the missing boy–except that he’s no longer a boy and Helen doesn’t find him in 21st century Scotland; time passed differently for him than it has in the future.

But it has become necessary for the MacCoinnichs to start time traveling again because evil has again arisen. It will require Druids from both the 16th and the 21st century working together to overcome it. Because just as with Grainna, the evildoer is not from the past, it is a person from the 21st century.

Escape Rating B: This series is like crack. I say that in a good way. I get one and start and can’t stop. I’m in the middle of Highland Protector right now because I couldn’t stand not to start it instantly. I poured through the first three without stopping for a break. The whole series is a big YUM if you like time-travel romance. And with KILTS! Double-yum.

I love it that the MacCoinnich family is completely functional. There are so many series where everyone is has a fucked up home life and there is angst on both sides and both the hero and heroine are completely damaged people. Simon’s family is totally solid and they love and support each other whatever happens. It’s great to catch up with the couples from the first series, but in general, this is a family you would want to be related to or have a meal with.

One of the most interesting characters in Highland Shifter is the side-character Mrs. Dawson. She’s Helen’s surrogate mother. I wish there was a novella about her life with the late Mr. Dawson, because Mrs. Dawson is very special. It’s clear she’s a Druid, but she’s got one hell of a power that’s concealed. Or something. She opens her home to everyone, but she’s also this very clear pool of patience and kindness and yet, when called upon, actual magic oomph. There’s way more to her than meets the eye.

Helen wasn’t quite as much fun as some of the previous heroines in this series. There was something horrible in her past that kept being alluded to but wasn’t ever spelled out that kept her from being willing to give Simon half a chance, until she suddenly changed her mind (or gave in to his overwhelming hotness) all at once. On the other hand, in spite of her ability to find things, she never seems to have found out that her boss was a creep, or been willing to believe it even when presented with pretty incontrovertible evidence.

She was also a bit slow on the uptake about the extent of Simon’s powers, and he was equally slow about informing her. Not quite the way to develop a trusting relationship. However, the way his mother made sure Helen got informed was just plain rude. Effective, but rude.

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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.

Bittersweet Magic Release Day Blast + Giveaway

Posted on November 11, 2013November 10, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> Promo Post

Edge is a digital-first single-title romance line from Entangled Publishing.

Entangled Edge just so happens to publish in some of the genres I’m very, very fond of, like Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance and the one that’s near and dear to my heart, Science Fiction Romance.

In fact, Nina Croft the author featured in this blast, is the purveyor of one of my very favorite SFR series, Blood Hunter, which is also published by Entangled. But that’s not what this blast is about.

This is about Bittersweet Magic, book two in her series about The Order. I had so much fun with Bittersweet Blood (see review for details) when it came out earlier this year that I’ve just been waiting for Bittersweet Magic. (bittersweet magic, it sounds just like chocolate!)

I’ll have a review of Bittersweet Magic next week, along with another giveaway, but in the meantime, here’s your first chance to get a taste of Nina’s new Bittersweet delights!

Roz has been indebted to the demon Asmodai for five hundred years, and her freedom is just around the corner. All she has to do is complete one last task for him—obtain a key that had been hidden in a church centuries ago.

Piers, the Head of the Order and an ancient vampire, is intrigued by the woman who comes to him for help. She’s beautiful and seemingly kind, but she’s hiding something. And he’ll find out who she is and what she really wants once he uses his power to get inside her head. But Piers has no idea that Roz is immune to his mind-control…or that he is simply a pawn in her dangerous mission for freedom.

Amazon Barnes & Noble

Author info:

Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia, which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of nine-to-five work. She then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary) but has now settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain.

Nina’s writing mixes romance with elements of paranormal and science fiction.

Website * Twitter * Facebook * Goodreads * Newsletter

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The Sunday Post AKA What’s On My (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 11-10-13

Posted on November 10, 2013November 10, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Blog Hops> Giveaways> Gratitude Giveaways Hop> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

For many people in the United States, this is a three-day weekend. November 11 is Veterans Day, the day we celebrate the service of all U.S. military veterans. It also coincides with holidays around the world such as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day that mark the anniversary of the end of World War I.

Veterans Day is not one of those holidays that gets moved around to the nearest convenient Monday. The date of November 11 has historical significance (see above, end of WWI). This year 11/11 just happens to be on a Monday.

And now on to our regularly scheduled linkification of bloggy events from this week and next week…

Current Giveaways:

The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins (paperback-US/CAN only) ends 11/16
$20 Amazon Gift Card (tourwide giveaway from Tiffany Allee) ends 11/14

Winner Announcements:

$10 Gift Card from the Fall Into Winter Romance Giveaway Hop — Perava P.
Work in Progress by Christina Esdon (ebook) — BN100
Take Me Cowboy by Jane Porter (ebook) — Jo J.
Getting Rowdy by Lori Foster (paperback) — Lily B.

Blog Recap:

B Review: The Best Man by Kristan Higgins
B+ Review: The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins + Giveaway
A Review: Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest
B+ Review: Foreplay by Sophie Jordan
B Review: Vampire Games by Tiffany Allee + Giveaway
Stacking the Shelves (66)

Coming Next Week:

I’ll Be Home for Christmas by Jessica Scott (review)
Bittersweet Magic by Nina Croft Release Day Blast + Giveaway
The Stranger You Know by Andrea Kane (blog tour review + guest post + giveaway)
Highland Shifter by Catherine Bybee (review)
Trancehack by Sonya Clark (blog tour review + guest post + giveaway)
Vote for Real-Life Heroines: Harlequin’s More Than Words Awards 2014
Gratitude Giveaways Hop

Stacking the Shelves (66)

Posted on November 9, 2013November 9, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

First, I may not often say this, but it is always true; this Stacking the Shelves post is part of the Stacking the Shelves meme hosted at Tynga’s Reviews. It’s all about sharing the books we’re adding to our shelves, whether those books (and shelves) are physical or virtual. If you want to see the panoply of everyone’s shelves, check out the list of blogs who have attached themselves to this week’s post at Tynga’s. I’ll be there too.

Speaking of physical and/or virtual shelves, occasionally someone either asks if I read all the books I get, or wonders what I do with all the ARCs I get, or simply wonders if I’m nuts.

The answer to the third question may be self-evident.

Except for library books, I try not to get print. We already have more than enough print books in the place (we’re looking for a new apartment, and we’ll be reducing the hoard again). NetGalley and Edelweiss are my BFFs.

In the end, I read about 50% of what I get, although that might be a LONG end. But overall, about 50%. I already have tour commitments for 6 of the books on this list, and a maybe on a 7th, but some of those tours aren’t until March and April of 2014.

Planning for Spring! Now that’s a ray of sunshine on an otherwise gloomy November day.

black stiletto secrets and lies by raymond benson

in a treacherous court by michelle diener

she walks in darkness by evangeline walton

For Review:
After I’m Gone by Laura Lippman
After the Rain (Fire and Rain #2) by Daisy Harris
The Black Stiletto: Secrets & Lies (Black Stiletto #4) by Raymond Benson
Clean (Mindspace Investigations #1) by Alex Hughes
Deception’s Web (Deizian Empire #3) by Christa McHugh
Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World by Anne Jamison
Long Live the Queen (Immortal Empire #3) by Kate Locke
The Past and Other Lies by Maggie Joel
Prince of Tricks (Demons of Elysium #1) by Jane Kindred
Sharp (Mindspace Investigations #2) by Alex Hughes
She Walks in Darkness by Evangeline Walton
Somewhere in France by Jennifer Robson
Spokes by P.D. Singer
The Temptation of Lady Serena (Marriage Game #3) by Ella Quinn
Under a Silent Moon by Elizabeth Haynes

Purchased:
Chaos Born (Chronicles from the Applecross #1) by Rebekah Turner (free at Amazon)

Borrowed from the Library:
In a Treacherous Court (Susanna Horenbout and John Parker #1) by Michelle Diener
Mirror, Mirror by J.D. Robb, Mary Blayney, Elaine Fox, Mary Kay McComas, R.C. Ryan, Ruth Ryan Langan
The Proposal (Survivor’s Club #1) by Mary Balogh

Review: Vampire Games by Tiffany Allee + Giveaway

Posted on November 8, 2013November 6, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Paranormal romance
Series: From the Files of the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency #4
Length: 146 pages
Publisher: Entangled Ever After
Date Released: October 28, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, All Romance

She’s seen the past…

OWEA Agent Beatrice Davis is haunted by the death visions that help her solve crimes. When Detective Claude Desmairis, her vampire ex-lover, asks for her assistance on a case, she’d rather help him than take the mandated leave to stave off her burn-out.

The truth won’t stay buried…

Pressed to solve a series of crimes before the perpetrator blows the vampire world apart, Claude turns to a woman he thought he’d been able to leave behind. But he was wrong, and his feelings for her will only bring trouble in an investigation this dangerous.

As their passions reignite, they see a possible future together. Until her visions show her the face of the murderer—a man Claude can never betray.

My Review:

In my review of Lycan Unleashed, the previous entry in the Files of the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency, I asked for Claude Desmarais’ story. I wanted to know exactly where, or at least why, the vampire kept having to leave his OWEA partner behind while he got dragged off for “vampire business”.

I certainly got my wish fulfilled in Vampire Games. The vampire business that Claude has been messed up in turned out to be not so much vampire business as monkey business, but he hasn’t been the instigator.

While Claude has been investigating a vampire gone wrong, someone else has been protecting that same vamp from the consequences of his evil ways. And it’s been some pretty high level influential protection. Claude knows that someone in the OWEA and in the Chicago Police Department’s Paranormal Unit is keeping his investigation from bearing fruit, so he isn’t sure who he really can trust.

So he goes off the reservation to the one person he knows won’t betray him, at least in an official sense. OWEA Agent Beatrice Davis may be the best psychometrist in the world. She can tell where any object has been and who last handled it. The problem with psychometry is that when you’re investigating murder, you handle a lot of objects that have been to a lot of bad places and been handled by a lot of evil people. It wears you down.

Bea Davis is on leave recovering from her last several cases. Claude shouldn’t be asking her to handle another job. Or another item used for ritual murder. He also shouldn’t be near her after he broke her heart years ago and stomped it into pieces. But he needs her help.

And he’s finally willing to admit that he just plain needs her. That he only let her go so abruptly because he didn’t want all the enemies he’d accumulated in his very long life to start going after her.

The first vision Bea gets from the object he shows her proves it’s much, much too late. His enemies have been screwing up her life long before she ever met him. Now they just need to face them together. But only if Claude can manage to look at all the evidence in front of him, instead of thinking that his old friend can’t possibly be a criminal just because he’s a friend.

That sort of thinking can get someone killed.

Escape Rating B : If you like urban fantasy with a heaping helping of paranormal romance, or the other way around, get yourself a copy of the first book in this series, Banshee Charmer (see review for details), and start now. This series has great worldbuilding and while each book has its own self-contained story, it is very cool to see the overall picture put together.

Vampire Games is a “second chance at love” story. Bea and Claude, but especially Bea, have a hell of a lot of damage to overcome from that first try, and the author does an excellent job of making sure that the reader feels just how much pain Claude left her in when he stomped on her heart. She shouldn’t take him back, but we understand why she wants to. At the same time, we get a sense of why he left; loving him made them both vulnerable, and not just emotionally. Distance was both easier and safer.

It just also turned out to be stupid.

Because this is also an urban fantasy, there is a criminal case to be solved as well. Claude has been chasing down Nicolas Chevalier for years, trying to put together a case that will stick. The problem is that Nic is the son of a vampire Magister, and his father won’t accept anything less than an iron-clad case. So even though everyone knows that Nic is a sadistic psychopath, proving it is another matter. Especially since Nic usually strikes whenever his father sends Claude away from town on “vampire business”.

Claude is loyal to Luc, one of his oldest and dearest friends. He refuses to believe that Luc is the one making the evidence against Nic disappear, even as he manages to collect untainted evidence from outside the system. The depth of his loyalty was touching, but also reached the point of straining the imagination a bit. Or the lengths that Luc was willing to go to in order to protect his sociopathic killer of a son.

Somewhere between those two extremes, something was a bit off-kilter for me in the break-neck speed of the investigation.

But I loved the way the relationship teetered and swung and built between Bea and Claude. The way they both quickly and hesitantly reached toward something both new and old was marvelous.

I hope that more Files will be extracted from the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

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***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 or borrowed from a public library 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.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s On My (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 11-3-13

Posted on November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Blog Hops> Book Giveaway> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

Yesterday a storm blew through Seattle and 200,000 people lost power temporarily. Although we weren’t among them, Comcast was less than Comcastic for most of the day. They must have lost something major.

NO NET. Horrors! Or not. It’s nights like that Clear 4G wireless was invented for. Mobile internet access isn’t just for hotels anymore.

Yes, we’re geeks. Right now I’m one very annoyed geek. Galen took the Clear modem on a trip and I’m sitting at Third Place using their wifi. Comcastic is down again.

This seems to have been giveaway week at Reading Reality. There are four ongoing giveaways, so there should be something for everyone, including another $10 Amazon or B&N gift card.