Recommendations

Niki Slobodian

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So I just read three books by author J.L. Murray. These were cheap on Amazon, so they were a little bit shorter than something you might see from a more established writer such as Kim Harrison or Jim Butcher. Still, they were rather interesting.

The first book is Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Niki (Nikita) Slobodian, as you might have guess from the post title, is the main character. Niki is of Ukranian (I think) descent. Her father is a mobster of some sort. Because aren’t all Ukranians(*SARCASM ALERT*)? At any rate, Niki is one of a minority of people called Abnormals (or Abbies for short). Abnormals are people with unusual abilities. They are also deemed criminals by this world’s standards. It’s a bit McCarthy-esque with a Registry and everything. Or perhaps X-Men-esque.

Niki can see ghosts and help them cross over. Niki had been placed on this Abnormal after a grand show trial. She was essentially put on trial because her father was the first ever Abnormal placed on trial for being Abnormal and like father like daughter. Being on the Abnormal Registry, she isn’t allowed to hold a job so things are getting rather tough financially and her godmother, Sofi, is undergoing chemo.  Its a desperate situation.

That’s when she stumbles upon a bar in the middle of a sketchy industrial area called The Deep Blue Sea. Inside the bar is the bar keeper (Janis) and one man, Sam. Sam has a deal for Niki. He has a job he needs done. He can’t do it, but she can. In exchange, she’ll get her name off the Registry, get her guns back and a hefty payment. Wary but needing the cash and wanting her name back, Niki agrees and gets saddled with an Abnormal partner named Bobby Gage.

Bobby is a Caster. He can cast any number of spells so long as he can find the proper books to read from. Niki and Bobby need to find something, a creature from hell called a Dark. So far as I can figure, Darks are a bit like the Dark Phoenix creature from the Marvel Universe. Darks are spirit beings that can possess humans (and Abnormals) and make them do anything, even against their will. Darks will do anything to, so long as they enjoy it. That enjoyment tends to be more death and dismemberment than a trip to the water park.

Niki and Bobby have to find this Dark, which could be in anyone, and return it to hell. So they have to follow the trail of destruction and death until they can finally figure out how to trap it. Once they find it and get rid of it, the Dark turns out to have been just a distraction from the real deal. A high level demon named Abbadon is trying to get a foothold in the world…with the help of Niki’s father.

How will she deal with this new threat? What is going to happen with her father? And just who, exactly, is Sam? Well, we get at least two out of three answers at the end of the book. 🙂 As I said before, it is a little shorter than an established author’s books might be but it has promise. And I bought the following two books which I will review shortly. So I’ll rate this a solid B. For 3 bucks, it isn’t a bad little read.

Archangel Series

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So I’ve read a bunch of these books by Nalini Singh in her Archangel/Guild Hunter series. It started with Archangel’s Kiss. I was intrigued by the idea that angels and archangels (the most powerful of all angels and their leaders) made vampires out of some sort of poison in their blood. Either they made vampires and got ride of the poison or they’d go mad. There is a private company of people called hunters that are hired to go after vampires who run amok.

It started out with archangel Raphael hiring a hunter from this guild (see what I did there?) to track down not a vampire but another archangel, a mad one who is surprisingly good at hiding himself. This hunter, Elena, has  the nose that knows and can pick out individual people’s (vampires/angels too) scents.

This series started out promisingly enough but the main character Elena is presented as a seriously emotionally damaged woman who isn’t interested in relationships just work. What happens? The extreme UST between her and Raphael turns into a relationship. *sigh* Look, I like romance in my urban fantasy and I like urban fantasy in my romance. They are my Reese’s ™ peanut butter cups. But I am really tired of this ‘magical healing’….relationship.

Now this first book, Archangel’s Kiss was a good book and created an interestingly unique universe. But Singh just keeps adding more and more sex into these books until every other chapter is sex, and sex that doesn’t move the plot along. Seriously, I would have bought erotica if I wanted plot-what-plot sex.

I’ve read a few more books and stories in this series in the hopes that it will get back to the good writing of the first book and the really interesting universe. There’s a new book coming out that I’m not entirely certain if I want to pony up the dough to get. If it goes down in price, I might. And the beauty of the Kindle (also tm) is that I can get the first chapter as a preview.  So I can’t really, truly recommend this series but I wouldn’t exactly call it bad. Just…trite. Rating C-.

Fury’s Kiss

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Okay, so this is a brand new book, the third in Karen Chance’s Midnight’s Daughter series. The Midnight’s Daughter series is closely tied to her Cassie Palmer series. They both feature a lot of the same characters. Midnight’s Daughter revolves around the character Dorina Basarab, a dhampir-a half human/half vampire. Her father was brothers with Dracula. Yes, that Dracula and Chance’s version is a bit more insane than Stoker’s.

At any rate, Dorina (or Dory as she’s more commonly referred to) is an outcast in the vampire community. Not really human, not really vampire she isn’t considered a vampire ‘citizen’. She has no rights and anyone can basically do anything they want to her…if her powerful father, Mircea, wasn’t protecting her. Dhampirs are feared by vampires because they tend to go into homicidal rages where they can kill even powerful vampires easily.

Fury’s Kiss is the third book in this series. Dory has come a long way since the beginning (Midnight’s Daughter) where she didn’t trust anyone, especially vampires and double-especially her father. They have a rather screwed up family dynamic and we finally figure out why in this book.

This book is so new that I won’t go into too much detail so I don’t spoil it for anyone. Basically, Dory is helping on a special Senate (vampire, not US) task force on smuggling. The problem is…she doesn’t remember her last assignment. The one that gorgeous vamp (aren’t they all these days?) Louis-Cesare rescued her from. And did I mention that this assignment was key to helping win the war between the vampires and the Black Circle (evil human mages-not the most original of names for an evil magic organization but fitting).

Who is behind the smuggling? Why is her memory missing? And just what is she going to do about Louis-Cesare? Because he seems determined to get in her pants…and stick around afterwards. Dory does not do relationships very well but rather than seeming like a trite plot device that I’ve complained about before, Chance does a very good job of showing us why Dory is the way she is. And how she’s starting to get better.

I would very much recommend that if you are interested in the Midnight’s Daughter series, that you start with the first book Midnight’s Daughter by Karen Chance. I am addicted to this series and to it’s companion series (Cassie Palmer). The one thing I don’t like about the Cassie Palmer series is…welll, Cassie Palmer. She has moments of total bad-assery but sometimes she comes across as whiney and dangerously incompetent. I’m hopefully Cassie Palmer will come along as beautifully as Dorina Basarab is. Rating: A

Angels of Light and Darkness

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So I went on vacation this last week and I managed to not read the entire time. Weird, I know but I had wine to taste instead. 🙂 But before I went on vacation, I re-read the second book in Simon R. Green’s Nightside arc, Angels of Light and Darkness. In this book, John Taylor is hired by Father Jude who represents the Vatican. The Pope wants to hire Taylor to find a very powerful, very dangerous object. If it gets out into the world and the wrong hands, it could lead to the end of the world. Quite literally.

And the object? The Unholy Grail. This is (supposedly mind you, since I have absolutely no idea if such an object exists/existed) the cup that Judas drank out of at the last supper. Yes, that Judas. Yes, that last supper. An object like that would be very powerful an anyone’s hands. There really isn’t a ‘right hands’ or a ‘wrong hands’ in the Nightside. The whole place is very…in between.

But the Vatican isn’t the only interested party. When Taylor first tries to use his special gift to find the Unholy Grail right off the bat, his mind gets hijacked by Above and Below (yes, I feel that the capitals are necessary). Each side wants it for their own use, each wanted to bring about the end of days on their own terms. Each side believes that this cup will guarantee them victory over the other side. Taylor tricks his way out of the situation by pitting Above against Below and escaping in the melee.

With using his gift out, Taylor has to pound the pavement doing the usual PI bit of finding clues and rattling cages. He picks up Suzie Shooter (also known as Oh Christ, it’s her! Run!) and off the go, bashing heads, demanding answers and being general nuisances. Meanwhile, angels from both sides are in the Nightside, grabbing random people in search of the same thing. Unfortunately for the grabees, they don’t usually come back alive.

Taylor and Suzie follow leads, get the crap kicked out of them and run from the angels until they find out who exactly has the Grail. Of course they find it! It wouldn’t be nearly so interesting if they didn’t. 😉 But to find out who done it, you need to read the book! Please do. I’m rather fond of Simon R. Green and the more people read his books, the more he’ll write.

Rating: B. Solid book but not one of my absolute favorite Nightsides. Great intro into the series though, even if it is the second book and not the first.

Geekomancy

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So I was just going through my Amazon recs and came across a book called Geekomancy by Michael R. Underwood. Being that I am a geek, I was intrigued. So I downloaded the sample to my Kindle and away we go. I was a little worried by the ridiculously complicated name of the main character which I can’t remember the whole of so I’ll just let you know that she’s Ree Reyes.

I’m not entirely sure one has to be a geek to enjoy this book but it would definitely help to understand it. This book is made up of mostly pop/geek culture references. I personally love when my favorite writers sneak in a pop culture reference (Jim Butcher, I’m looking at you) but this might be a tad much for some. The character of Ree tends to think of things in a  geeky way. Like breaking down people into D&D character sheet traits (strength #, wisdom #, intelligence #, charisma # etc).

She works at a theme cafe called Cafe Xombi that provides coffee, pastries and comics (among other things). She’s got the standard urban fantasy trops of having recently broken up with her boyfriend, her mother left when she was a child, her father is poor/hard-working and in every way supportive and she has a dream job (being a screen writer) that just isn’t meant to be. Just once I would like to see a female character (or any main character I suppose) be in a stable relationship, have both parents and a job that they love and don’t lose.

Aaaaaaaanyway, moving on. Ree’s post-break-up mopiness is interrupted by the arrival of a man who insists on being known as Eastwood (*sigh*), who is the one who inadvertently introduces her into the world of the weird. Now here is where I rather like the world that Underwood is creating because I haven’t seen something like it before.

Back around the time of the Renaissance, those people who could do magic influenced how those who could not do magic see magic. What I mean is, they created this thing called The Doubt. Because of the books and general enlightenment of the era, those who did magic basically put a big, multi-generational “someone else’s problem” spell on, well, Muggles for lack of a better term.

Someone who has magic has a type of magic. Werewolves are Atavists, who use magic to bring out the beast in them…turns out they have to use rubber werewolf suits as a focus but hey. Eastwood can basically use comics and other geek memorabilia to gain powers. The rarer the item, the longer the power will last. Like a Nightcrawler card will allow him to teleport briefly. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Ree’s power is emulation, which would also rock. She can watch something or read something and gain the ability to do that thing. Want to fight like Buffy? Watch Band Candy. Want to dodge attacks? Watch The Matrix. Want to investigate a crime? Well, that’s all on BBC’s Sherlock (which you should totally watch BTW, because AWESOME doesn’t cover it). It only lasts for a little while and it doesn’t make her bullet or wound proof but hey, she can kick some booty.

So Eastwood has her looking into some virgin suicides that he is apparently investigating. Only investigating is a rather loose term. Its more like he’s looking for them specifically. He needs to collect the souls of five virgin suicides to get his lady love back from a demon (who is so ridiculously named I didn’t even try to remember it). And who is our mystery love? I’ll give you three guesses. No? Enter trope long-lost-mom.

Oh what is a girl to do? Well, read and find out. 🙂 This is a geek’s fantasy. I’m telling you if I could suddenly dive into an urban fantasy book, I think it would be this one. How cool would it be to be able to fight like Westley and Inigo Montoya simply by watching The Princess Bride? I know right?! But it is a really trope-y book, just so you’re forewarned. I enjoyed it enough that I would read another book in this series (if there is a series-it was certainly left open for a follow up). Rating B. His writing could use a little work. I feel like there was a lot of exposition in this book and that any follow ups would be smoother.

Ashes of Honor

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Okay, so putting this out there ***MAJOR SPOILERS***. You have been warned.

Oh. My. God. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod. Ashes of Honor is fantastic. This might just be my favorite of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye books. We pick up with plucky Toby some months after Connor has died and Gillian has chosen to be human. At the very start of the book, she is doing something dangerous, confronting a group of teenage Changeling druggies. But these drugs aren’t the usual drugs of pot or heroin one might think of as being rampant in a city just as San Francisco. This drug is called goblinfruit and while harmless to purebloods, it is addictive and fatal to Changelings.

Toby is confronting them without back up and with only her knife. These kids are armed with mortal weapons and are of the opinion that Toby needs to die. Why? Because in the very first Toby Day novel, Rosemary and Rue, Toby killed Devin, the man that took care of most Changeling kids. So they shoot Toby but it doesn’t kill her. Toby’s mom messing about with her blood to make her more than a mere Changeling makes her very hard to kill. That doesn’t stop her friends from worrying.

Speaking of friends, Tybalt has been sent after her by May and Quentin, arriving just in time to dispense some Cait Sidhe justice on the stupid young drug dealers. He then takes her home where another surprise is waiting for her, Etienne the Senechal for Shadowed Hills. Etienne has a problem. Namely, he had a daughter by a human some sixteen years ago and never knew it. And now, that daughter has come into her fae powers and has disappeared.

Disappearing happens to be Etienne’s trick. He’s Tuatha de Dannan, a teleporter. And his daughter is too. Only she’s a lot more powerful than dear old dad. Apparently on occasion Changeling children are more powerful than their full blood parents because something goes (genetically, I’m assuming) wrong and they have none of the innate blocks on their powers that pure bloods have.

The problems start piling up as Toby takes Quentin to visit her aunt, the Luidaeg (Sea Witch) for a tracking charm. It seems that an out of control Changeling Tuatha can rip the very fabric of Faerie apart at the seams. Etienne’s daughter, Chelsea, has apparently already been to places that the long gone Oberon had sealed off for his own mysterious reasons. And because everyone in Faerie lives by Oberon’s Laws, this could mean tons of trouble.

Toby has to track down Chelsea and the ones who took her while dealing with a Tybalt who has finally, FINALLY confessed his feeling to her. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I have been waiting for this forever and a day! Not to mention that one of his subjects is attempting to usurp Tybalt’s throne and the Countess of Dreaming Glass, Treasa Riordan, is up to something.

This was an amazing book and I am sooooo tempted to re-read it right now. Seanan McGuire, you had better write the next book because I’m drooling for more! Rating A+

The Vesuvius Club

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Well, as I got an Amazon gift card for my birthday back in August, I decided to take a chance on The Vesuvius Club. There was no supernatural element to this book at all. If I had to classify it, I’d go for Victorian espionage.

Written by BBC Sherlock writer Mark Gatiss, I had some vague sort of hopes for this book but I wasn’t sure exactly what they were. I like Gatiss and I love Sherlock ( Benedict Cumberbatch! Martin Freeman! Mmmm!) but I was a little wary.

The book follows protagonist Lucifer Box, artist and spy, as he tries to investigate the deaths of a couple scientists of the realm while trying to make some money on the side teaching art to vapid society dames. Box has some strange morals for the time. He’s always impeccably dressed as any society man should be…but he really doesn’t see anything wrong with shooting a mark in a restaurant. Not to mention that he’s bisexual which was a big no-no in Victoria’s day.

Box’s investigation eventually leads him to Naples, where all unfolds amid chases, sex (non-graphic, which makes a nice change) and assassination attempts.

It was an interesting book and I am intrigued to see what happens afterwards. Be warned though that pretty much all the characters have ridiculous names (as evident by the main character’s name) and it is rife with British slang you might need to look up (dictionary.com is a good source). Think of it rather like a Victorian James Bond. So I guess I’d rate this a B/B-

Ghost of a Dream

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So I wasn’t too sure what to make of the Ghostfinders stories from Simon R. Green at first. I LOVE Simon R. Green, easily one of my top 5 authors. But the first book was really kind of meh. The second book was a bit better and this third one, Ghost of a Dream is a bit better than that.

Ghost of a Dream starts out with our favorite (read only) Ghost Hunters JC Chance, Melody Chambers and “Happy” Jack Palmer on the case of a ghost train, which is just an awesome concept. I love ghost train stories. At any rate, they’ve been sent up north to figure out why Bad Things have been happening to an abandoned train station called Bradleigh Halt that was supposed to get refurbished by a local steam train enthusiasts society.

The event behind the haunting is a missing train from the Victorian Era. It went in a tunnel near Bradleigh Halt and never came out. Now it wants to come home from the Outside and its bringing Something back with it.  Its up to JC, Melody and Happy to figure out what that Something is and how to kick it’s arse back to where it came from.

That’s the first sort of intro story that Simon often puts in his stories, a little teaser to whet your appetite for the real deal and the bigger, badder nasty. The second story is a tad more interesting. It takes place very soon after the Bradleigh Halt incident at a theater that was out of production for twenty years. The owners of said theater apparently have pull with the Carnacki Institute’s big cheese, Catherine Latimer, and so the three Ghostfinders find themselves on what appears to be a typical haunting.

And when I say typical I mean typical. All of the little spooky incidents are the sorts of things that people up and down the centuries have been claiming  as proof of ghosts: flickering lights, cold spots, eerie noises and doors opening and closing on their own. Nothing is outright malevolent at first but something is definitely there and definitely powerful and definitely after the two actors who are re-opening the theater.

JC and his team have to find out why and not only that, but another big, bad nasty is taking the opportunity to try and finish them off. Will they survive?! Duhn-duhn-DUUUUUUUUUUHN! Well, SPOILERS, they do survive because the series is clearly not over yet but it there was a bit of a cliffhanger moment at the very end that made me go “YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO ME!!”. So over all, I’d say that this isn’t quite as good as Hawk&Fisher, Deathstalker or the Nightside story arcs…yet. It has potential and it seems to be working up to it slowly. So I do recommend the books because I will always recommend Simon R. Green. Rating B.

Taken

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Just finished the brand new Alex Verus novel yesterday. What’s that you say? It was only released Tuesday? Well that’s just how I roll baby. 😉

Anyway, I won’t go into too many details since the book is brand spanking new and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone. In this one, Alex is tapped to figure out who is abducting apprentice mages.

Each abduction is neat, very neat. No witnesses, no clues and no trace of abductors or the victims. Even time mage and occasional side kick Sonder is stumped.

And then the Council hires Verus and all sorts of suspicious clues start popping up. And suspicious people, lets not forget them.

So I’ll leave off there so as to not give any more away and just tell you to read it!. A+. Oh and Mr. Jacka…thank you sir may I have another?

Gears of Wonderland

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Oh yes, I wanted to share this one too. I am always on the look out for a good steampunk book. There seem to be so little out there to choose from that are really gripping and don’t rely on sex to move the story along. Well, do I have a treat for you!

Go out and buy Gears of Wonderland by Jason G. Anderson. It is just 2.99 for Kindle on Amazon! I had been a little wary about getting the sample for that book because the cheaper books never seem to be quite as good as the more regularly priced, more ‘mainstream’ novels. I was so pleasantly surprised by this.

Now, I have to admit something right now. I have never read Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I know, I know. Surely some of you out there will think it sacrilege on my part but I just couldn’t get into. I might try again. Perhaps I would have gotten into it if my parents had read it to me as a child. Or if I hadn’t been just totally and completely CREEPED OUT by the animated Disney movie. Dear god that’s frightening to a six year old.

At any rate, I don’t have as much knowledge of the Alice universe as some might. This may be part of the reason I liked this book, since I had a fairly open mind about the universe. So the story starts with innocent British schlub James Riggs getting the metaphorical shaft from both his job and his (total bitch) fiancee. Heading to his best friend’s flat, James’s world is turned upside down by the friend’s murder and James’ subsequent fleeing of the scene.

Someone pushes James into Wonderland through a gate of some sort. James gets picked up by Mad Hatter’s daughter. Your first question might be “why”. Well, because apparently all the Wonderlandians have a mark on their arms denoting their kingdom and their rank in society. For instance, the Queen of Hearts (dead now thanks to assassination) would have a Queen of Hearts playing card on her arm. Her son would be the Knave (or Jack to us Americans). James’s mark is a white knight and a red knight crossed over each other. This is apparently tres weird and prompts the not-so-mad Little Hatter into taking him to meet the very much alive and still quite Mad Hatter.

From there, things just seem to go down hill from there. The Heart Guard is after him on the order of the King (formerly the Knave) of Hearts. Apparently outsiders such as James and the original Alice are considered dangerous. James and Kara the Little Hatter go on the run, searching for Caterpillar (the Oracle) and the reason behind James’s strange mark. On their journey, they meet White Rabbit (not an actual Rabbit, but a mercenary), Grphon (a freedom fighter) and of course the infamous Cheshire Cat among others.

I hope not to give too much away but the premise is that outsiders have the ability to change Wonderland simply through their thoughts. Because of this, the Wonderland that James falls into is very steampunk and almost-but-not-quite Victorian. There are air ships that run on aether, steam carriages, and guns that are reminiscent of the Teslas from Warehouse 13. James influence so far seems to be a bit more subtle in changing the way people talk.

So James goes on an adventure that he never imagined he could in his life. He’s surprised left, right and center but he learns and grows with it. He makes friends, though they might be just as surprised at that as he was, and he finds a place where he belongs.

This is a grand adventure in steampunk and it might, just might, induce me to try and re-read Carroll’s original Alice in Wonderland. And (SPOILER ALERT!!!) while Anderson gave a happy ending, he also left it open for a sequel. I really hope he writes one! Rating A+