vampires

Dead Ever After

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You know you’re addicted to reading when you buy a brand new book and read it in a matter of hours (spread out over two days, but hey, I was trying and failing to pace myself). I just picked up Charlaine Harris’s Dead Ever After. Its being billed as the final Sookie Stackhouse novel but there is a follow up “coda” of sorts due out in October (After Dead).  Since Dead Ever After just came out recently, I’ll try not to go into too many details. However, there may be inadvertent SPOILERS.

So at the end of the last book, Sookie was forced to use her precious faerie brooch the cluviel dor to bring Sam Merlotte, her boss and best friend, back from the dead. His former lover had accidentally killed him while trying to off the Shreveport werewolf pack leader Alcide. Things did not end up good for the girl.

This book picks up the day after pretty much. Sam is in shock (obviously). And we learn that there are some people out to get Sookie Stackhouse for pretty much everything that she had done in the previous books. Eric is pissed at Miss Sookie for using the cluviel dor on Sam rather than on him and his marriage problem.

So Sookie has to sort out Sam while keeping herself alive. We get all the good old characters back: Mr. Cataliades, Diantha, Bob the (no longer) cat, Amelia Carmichael, Bellboy Barry and Quinn (albeit briefly). It was a very good book and if you like the Stackhouse series at all, you cannot miss the finale.

My pet peeves with the book even though I highly enjoyed it:
1) Eric went back to his old dickish self. I’d thought he’d changed in the last few novels but alas, he was your “typical” vamp in that change is hard and probably doesn’t come at all.
2) All too brief cameos by Quinn and Alcide. Almost wasn’t worth having them there at all
3) The bringing back of two relatively minor douchebags as major baddies bent on revenge.
4) Bit of an unnecessary side plot involving Copley Carmichael, Amelia’s dad. It introduced some whole new information that literally NO ONE in this universe knew about…and went absolutely nowhere with it. Perhaps this information will lead into some sort of spinoff series in this same universe?

At any rate, despite my little peeves, I really enjoyed the book. I’ll likely pick up the coda in October as well. Until then, I’m going to need to pick up more books. Rating: B+/A-. And remember, I welcome suggestions!

Kate Locke

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So I decided to try this book God Save the Queen by Kate Locke on a whim. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read another steampunk-y type book since I’ve read a bunch of them lately but this one was really more of an alternate history modern fantasy book with a bit of steampunk in it. Instead of cell phones (or mobiles for you Brits out there), the have “rotaries” (and boy do I feel old for having used rotary phones). Instead of computers they have “logic engines”. A lot of the phrases have a steampunk type feel but it is most definitely set in the 20 century.

The basis behind this book is that the Black Plague transformed people into supernatural creatures (in this case, vampires and werewolves and goblins). “Full blooded” plagued people were considered aristocrats. Or I should say, full blood vampires were considered aristocrats. The werewolves in the UK were in one single gi-normous pack lead by The Alpha (Vexation ‘Vex’ MacLaughlin-such a silly great name).

It was accidentally discovered that full-blooded weres and vamps could have children with a certain segment of the human population. Human female courtesans are highly paid and respected by the plagued community for being able to produce half bloods (halvies).  Halvies are used for protection against humans seeing as halvies can go out in the day time while most full bloods cannot (I’m still not sure if full blooded weres can go out in the day).

Queen Victoria never died, she turned out to be a full blooded vamp. Prince Albert was killed in a human insurrection in the mid-1930s, rather than dying in the late 1800s. There was no World War I or World War II.

The main character is Alexandra (Xandy or Xandra) Vardan is a Royal Guard, whose job it is to protect Victoria. We are introduced to her trying to find a younger sister. That search turns into a somewhat convoluted investigation into faked deaths and sinister scientific/medical experiments on halvies which may include Xandra herself.

Who can she trust? Will she find out what happens to her sister? What are these experiments? We only get a few answers in this book but it is clear that this is going to be an arc, so I’m not too upset by some of the loose ends. It is a very interesting book. And the follow up Long Live the Queen was just as good. I really suggest reading it. Rating: A.

Blood Riders

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Hmm. Where to begin with this one. I guess I’d call Blood Riders by Michael P. Spradlin an Old West Steampunk Fantasy. Usually the steampunk stuff I read takes place in England or at least has a focus in Europe. This book takes place in Colorado, Wyoming and Kansas. The main character is one Captain Jonas Hollister, US Cavalry. Captain Hollister and his patrol run into something they’ve never seen before when out on what they think is a routine Indian patrol in Wyoming, looking for a group that ambushed settlers (please don’t bother me about this word. I know the correct term is Native American, but back in this time period, where the characters are, they use that word so I am using that word).

They couldn’t be more wrong. It wasn’t Indians who took out the settlers. It was…well he doesn’t know. But I’ll tell you. VAMPIRES. Or well, something like vampires. See, these creatures are referred to by themselves as Archaics. Apparently they are similar to vampires but consider themselves beyond vampires. They have most of the same vulnerabilities, but not all. They feed off blood but Archaics consider it a major taboo to feed off human blood (or at least now they do).

Unfortunately for Captain Hollister, the US Army doesn’t believe his “ravings” of blood demons killing his troops and, since he shot at least one of his men (to kill kill him), he is sentenced to hard labor at Leavenworth. If you think that prison is bad now, you should look up what it was like back then. At any rate, he rots there for about four years and nothing much of interest really happens to him. Until one day, one of his fellow prisoners, a mixed descent sergeant named Chee, gets in a fight with one of the notorious yard toughs.

Hollister watches Chee fight. As you might have guessed from the name, Chee does some fancy kung fu on the dumb prisoner and gets “the box” for his troubles, even though he was defending himself. Hollister thought that was the most interesting thing about the last four years…until he’s brought into the warden’s office to speak to Allan Pinkerton. Yes, that Pinkerton. As in the famous detective.

Seems that there’s been another attack similar to what Hollister went through four years ago, this time in Colorado. Only the last survivor of this one just happens to be a senator’s son (and for you history buffs out there, this means that this book takes place in 1876 or later, since Colorado was a territory before then). So maaaaaaaaaybe they might believe that Hollister was telling the truth four years ago.

In exchange for a full pardon and reinstatement to the army (as a major this time), Hollister is to track down and kill these things. He will have access to all the finest and newest weapons and technology. And a little help from one Abraham Van Helsing. Of course. Well, at least he only makes a bit of an appearance. Just a “here’s what you’re facing” exposition sort of appearance.

I found the book to be interesting for the most part, but I wouldn’t quite call it steampunk. Sure it used steam trains, but so did the real world at this point in time. The only thing that I think was really, truly steampunk-y was a steampowered weapon the writer referred to as the Ass Kicker. It would fire a large round big enough to basically slice a tree or two in half. It really is more of a historical fantasy with a touch of steampunk. Still, it was good enough for a five dollar book. Rating B.

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-.

Dancing Deliliah

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I read a couple of anthologies recently, Hex Appeal and Blood Lite III, and I came across a short story by Carole Nelson Douglas. I can’t remember the name of the story but it featured a woman by the name of Delilah Street and I had been intrigued by it. So I went off to Amazon and found the first story of Douglas’ that featured Delilah Street called Dancing with Werewolves.

This world starts out intriguingly. It starts out with young orphan Delilah (Why always orphans? Why don’t the main characters of these books ever have a happy childhood? That would be interesting to read), and her orphan peers waiting to see what happens at Y2k. Instead of nothing happening as it did in real life, there was some sort of great magical awakening. Douglas was somewhat vague as to what this was however. I wasn’t clear if the magic already existing in the world just swelled to the point where humans couldn’t ignore it any more or if the magical creatures in the world came out of the supernatural closet. However, I’m willing to pass this vagueness off as being the poor recollections of a child, which Delilah was at the time.

Delilah Street grew up into an investigative reporter. In Kansas. Having lived in a mid-western state, I can only imagine that being as thrilling as it sounds. Delilah tried and failed at dating the vampire anchor at her local news station and his new squeeze, the weather witch, promptly sent a tornado to destroy Delilah’s home. Ooookay then. No explanations as to why the vamp or the weather witch were suddenly so keen to get rid of her but its was a convenient plot device to get Delilah to move on to…Las Vegas!

Here she has a magical encounter with some random dude in a park that gives them both an orgasm of a life time….Really? Already? Trope-tastic magical encounter with sexy male supe, check! Let’s move on to the next cliche. The magical encounter is observed by some rich shut in from his conveniently next door home that is bristling with surveillance. He offers her a job investigating old Vegas crimes. Why? Because he’s a TV producer of course! And he runs the umpteenth version of CSI. Okay, that I found funny. 🙂

So she starts investigating the crime that induced her magical sex ride with the sexy supe (Ric). Which leads her to equally sexy but definitely a bad-guy, probably a vamp but will never admit it, Snow. An albino vampire, he owns the Inferno Hotel (as in Dante’s Inferno). And he has an immediate thing for Delilah. Of course. But the supernatural run ins don’t stop with him. She has a run in with the werewolf mafia, zombies with magical overlays to make them appear as old cinema stars, and weird faerie type creatures.

I almost felt like she was trying to squeeze every trope imaginable into a story that was about 300 pages. The short story was far more intriguing than this longer book. There are several more books in this series and I don’t think I’m going to read them. It was a promising premise but I feel like a writer such as Simon R. Green or Jim Butcher could have done so much more with it. Rating: D-D+. This is harsher than I usually am, but I feel you’d probably be better off skipping this one. Unless you like trope heavy stories, in which case have at it and to each their own. I love cheesy sci-fi movies after all, so who am I to judge? 😉

Anita Blake

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I read the first 5-6 Anita Blake novels a while ago and I had to stop and change tracks. Not that I don’t like the books, since I’ve read up to Cerulean Sins now, but I just needed something different. So I did something I try hard not to do and I left Blue Moon in the middle of the book. I think I was just tired of Anita’s quirky sort of self righteousness. She kills monsters, she sleeps with monsters and yet…she hates them.

She’s got several men on the hook and but she can’t decide which one to stick with. I find that a bit selfish, especially when she started out going “no sex EVER” (a now broken rule) and “not human=monsters” (also a now broken rule). She’s got a bazillion rules for a guy who either wants to sleep with her or date her. And some how it is always the man’s fault when he trips up over one of the rules. Which I find unfair. How is a man supposed to know not to do something when you don’t tell him not to?

On the other hand, it is nice to see a competent woman in the main character role. She knows her strengths and her weaknesses. She knows how to kill the bad guys (she is the Executioner after all) and is more than willing to do so. And yet we’ve seen her hurt and squeamish. She isn’t super human. She isn’t vapid. And I like that. It always seems that when the main character is a woman, she’s absolutely clueless as to what she is and/or what’s going on.

So Blue Moon is basically Anita coming to the rescue of her then boyfriend (one of two at the moment) Richard when he gets framed for rape in Tennessee. She has to get him out, face down the local pack and local vamps and figure out why he was framed in the first place. Not bad as a book, good enough for me to read the next book, Obsidian Butterfly.

I really liked Obsidian Butterfly. It features the character Edward (a.k.a.-Death, Ted Forrester). He’s a sociopath bounty hunter who kills exclusively monsters or interesting prey. He has made appearances before and he was Anita’s teacher. I like Edward because I like a lot of the bad guy characters in books and because he’s entertaining in his way. He is what he is and he really doesn’t care what you think of him. But he has a monster program where his alter ego, Ted Forrester, lives in New Mexico. Anita is a monster expert and possibly a friend. I find this one the best I’ve read so far simply because Edward was a main focus.

So all in all, I’d rate Blue Moon about a B- but Obsidian Butterfly an A.

A Perfect Blood

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**SPOILERS**

So I just plowed through Kim Harrison’s latest Rachel Morgan novel, A Perfect Blood. It was good and yet in parts of it I wanted to wring the main character’s neck. We’ve had quite a few of these books and apparently Rachel Morgan still goes off half-cocked with no plan and no back up only to be surprised when she gets captured by the baddies!

In this book, she’s essentially spayed herself magically speaking because she’s afraid of how people will treat her as a full powered demon. Not to mention she doesn’t want to live permanently in the ever after with Al and the other wacko demons. So for half the book or so we watch Rachel trying to continue working as she had before…but without any of her demon abilities because while she’s come out as a demon, apparently she just mentally has not accepted that her life will change.

And now we have a new group of bad guys who, while clearly focusing on Rachel for something, are more into the destruction of anything non-human rather than Rachel specifically. This makes a nice change from the previous books where the bad guys seem intent on wiping Rachel out simple because she’s Rachel.

At any rate, her life is changing and she’s getting frustrated that she can’t keep up. Ivy and Jenks are moving on with their respective others and Rachel is just a bit jealous because she doesn’t have one. She’s trying to talk herself out of a clear crush on elf Trent Kalamak and I’m note entirely certain why. He’s a bit of a dick, sure, but he’s also helped her out of quite a bit of trouble. Those two need to shag and get it over with already.

Eventually Rachel reaches a breaking point where she HAS to regain her demon powers by removing her charmed silver bracelet. From there, she ends up kicking her ass in her usual Three Stooges way. Let’s face it, she can fight and she can spell but she really has little common sense. She never waits for backup and she purposefully limits herself by dampening her powers. I really do like these books but sometimes Rachel Morgan just seems a little too cliche to me.

Rating: B–B+

Archangel’s Consort

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I rather like the Archangel books by Nalini Singh. They’re a very novel take on vampires and angels. One of the latest books is Archangel’s Consort. The plot is intriguing but I was rather disappointed by all the sex. Yeah, that’s right. The first book was rife with UST (unresolved sexual tension) between Guild Hunter Elena and Archangel Raphael. It took them a long time to get to the sex. In the second book, they were constricted because of Elena’s injuries. In this book, there wasn’t any constrictions and the sex didn’t move the plot along. At all. There could have been much, much less of it and the book would be better off.

That being said, it was interesting to see the introduction of Raphael’s mother, Caliane. Caliane, and an unknown number of ancient archangels, are in a state called Sleep. Yes with a capital S. It seems that when these immortals get bored they basically hibernate until they’re no longer bored or have cured whatever injury or madness has ailed them. And unfortunately, Caliane was mad when she hibernated.

When a Sleeper awakes, the power of the individual will set off calamities around the world. Strange weather patterns, earthquakes, tidal waves and even aberrant behavior in vampires and angels. Even archangels.  Since it is impossible for anyone to know who is waking with certainty, Raphael fears that it is his mother and that she is still mad. If she is, he would have to try and kill her. In this arc, no maddened angel or vampire is allowed to live. The trouble being, how does one kill an archangel who is a good fifty thousand years old an immeasurably powerful.

That is why fellow archangel Lijuan tries to convince Raphael to kill his mother before she wakes, in violation of one of angel kind’s deepest and oldest taboos. Unfortunately, Lijuan has ‘evolved’ into something that is far more demonic than angelic and therefore does not exude trustworthiness.

In any case, the story itself is quite interesting. If the sex had been toned down, I’d have given it an A, as it is I’ll have to give it a B because it annoyed me. There is more to urban fantasy than just sex. Look at The Dresden Files or The Nightside books. Sex is sprinkled in sparingly and they are awesome.

First Intro to Steampunk

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Courtesy of gailcarriger.comSome time ago I stumbled upon information about steampunk. I’m not entirely certain now what it was that first brought that to my attention, but as a historian, I was intrigued.  The Victorian Era is also referred to the Industrial Age and the Golden Age, depending on who you talk to and what exactly you’re talking about.  Depending on your social status, the era could have been awesome in terms of the new technology and the ability to freely travel or it could royally suck with terrible work and health conditions. And forget about being a woman in that day and age.

At any rate, I was intrigued, but it took me a while to try out anything.  Because I’m sort of new to the steampunk genre, I’m not entirely sure if these books qualify as steampunk or just as historical fantasies.

First up: Soulless by Gail Carriger.  I was drawn to this because the main female character doesn’t quite fit into the typical urban fantasy female lead mold.  Sure she’s tough, self-sufficient and speaks her mind (much to her mother’s horror), but she’s described as dark, swarthy, large-nosed and plump.  She’s not lithe, fit, svelte, atheletic etc that most of the female leads I read about are described as.  It’s a nice change.

Soulless mixes steampunk, romance and fantasy by talking the soulless character of Alexia Tarabotti (an English lady of Italian descent) and crossing her path with the alpha werewolf of Lord Conall Maccon (and his pack) and vampire Lord Akeldama (a lovely unconventional vampire).  Alexia and Maccon have to solve the mystery of why some vampires are mysteriously disappearing before things get out of hand (terrible summary, I know but I read this one a while ago. Sue me).  Alexia is, as many of my favorite characters are, a wise ass. And she’s not afraid to use it. Or her silver and wood reinforced black parasol, her favorite accessory.

The follow up to Soulless is Changeless. Alexia and Maccon, (SPOILER ALERT) married after the end of the first novel, have to solve the mystery of why members of the London pack (Lord Maccon’s pack) have suddenly stopped being able to change into werewolves.  It leads them all the way to Scotland, to Lord Maccon’s original pack, who also cannot change.  Things don’t end too well for the married couple, sorry to say. Not that anyone important dies, but still, Gail Carriger leaves us hanging on that. I haven’t gotten the third book Blameless yet, but Christmas is coming in a couple months, so we’ll see.  I highly recommend both the fist two books, A.

Next post: The Iron Duke by Meljean Brooke

Back to My Beginnings

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I am really into vampires.  No, they aren’t real. No, I don’t pretend to be one.  And again, they do not sparkle! But I very much like to read books where the main characters are vamps.  It all started for me with the movie Interview with the Vampire.  Yes, the movie.  Before that, I always thought of fantasy creatures such as vampires and werewolves were scary.  This is probably because my dad liked the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi and other classic horror movies and impressed upon me that vampires = scary.

The movie Interview with the Vampire changed that perspective for me. I wasn’t really scared of anything in that movie. I was, however, very intrigued.  Vampires weren’t entirely monstrous.  Indeed, the main character of the movie, Louis, tries very much to be human.  He attempts not to live off human blood for the longest time and he treats Claudia as a daughter.

I watched that movie twice in a row the day I rented it.  The rest of my family thought I was nuts. They didn’t like the movie and I couldn’t really explain my infatuation with it. But when I watched it the second time (with the lights off, to increase the ambiance), I noticed that it was based on a novel by author Anne Rice.

I think I was in junior high school at this time, and I was mostly into reading Star Trek book s (Yes, I am a Trekkie-I was born one) and Three Investigators novels (which I recommend for younger readers).  I was a little wary about starting Interview with the Vampire.  Oh. My. God.  It was an amazing book.

To this day, I still own the first copy of it I ever read.  This is an A+ book.  Anne Rice has a beautiful way with words. You can almost see and feel what the characters are seeing and feeling.  Lestat could have been an entirely unlikable character what with how much he thinks only of himself, but there are layers to him that you can’t help but fall in love with.

Interview with the Vampire was the first in a series of novels by Anne Rice revolving around an core group of vampires (Lestat, Louis, Armand et al) and humans (the ‘boy’ reporter Daniel and a secretive group called the Talamasca).  The Vampire Chronicles arc spans eons, from Ancient Egypt to present, and does it well.  I suppose it isn’t quite ‘urban’ fantasy in its entirety, but still well worth the read. To this day, one of my favorite authors is Anne Rice.