Suggested Reading (Non-Romance)

Hey there, I’m busily not reading book six in the Sherrilyn Kenyon series. That doesn’t meant the book is bad. It just means I have a life. We’ll have to wait and see if the book actually sucks.

Anyway, I was thinking on the fact that most of the focus here is on paranormal romance. It is because that’s what I’m about to write and my attention is there. I was thinking however of some paranormal classics. Anne Rice came to mind as did a few others, but I want to focus on something edging on horror and something intellectually savvy despite it being a coming of age story.

Well, let’s talk about my favorite Stephen King book, The Stand. It’s a pretty large book and I suggest you don’t read it during flu season or anytime you plan on going on a large road trip. Trust me, you’re imagination won’t have the additional yardage on the playground if you avoid doing those two things.

Of course the book is a classic horror, post-apocalyptic journey into severe creepiness. It’s got disease, the end of the world, survival, love, betrayal, a journey, some mysticism some evil, some good and some bad that’s kind of in the middle. And it’s pretty spine tingling.

Anyone who says they like horror has to read it. Anyone who says they love paranormal can skip it, but man it will add to your world in a way that’s uh…worth the unease.

Suggesting The Stand is a pretty easy pick. It’s King, it’s a classic. The next book on my suggested reading list is quite different from The Stand, in fact I wouldn’t even put them in the same aisle in the bookstore.

The Society of S by Susan Hubbard was a real surprise to me. I admit I bought it because it sounded potentially kinky. It’s not, but damn it’s a great book.

The story is about a 13 year old, Ariella. She’s of mixed heritage and the book is essentially her coming of age story. It sounds simple, but the causal paranormal twist, the intelligent dialogue and the calm, easy, manner of Hubbard makes this a must read.

Skip it though if you’re expecting a wild paranormal romp or to be scared to the nines. This book won’t deliver that. It will deliver, soft smiles, a linguistic playground, meandering intrigue all dressed up in a unique, enticingly languid style.

So, these are my non-paranormal romance suggestions of the month. I’ll try to include some in my reviews as I plow through the seedy, underground of smutty paranormals. It’ll be hard to keep my hands clean, but like I said, I’ll try.

Kiss of the Night: Sherrilyn Kenyon-Book Five

I finished book five in the wee hours of the …afternoon. Well it seemed wee like as I sat on a stone bench plowing through the last thirty pages or so. But maybe they weren’t wee, maybe they were really big giant minutes squished into the impatience of waiting for my ride.

Ah, but was it good?

Yes.

I guess that’s all I need for the review right?

Okay, I will elaborate, elucidate and just plain tell you why I thought it was good.

First let me tell you that I didn’t think the book was going to get a “must read” attitude from me at all. Unlike the previous jaunts into the Dark Hunter world, Kiss of the Night didn’t get good until page 100 or so.

The first 100 pages go on and on and really make the heroine, Cassandra, seem like a spoiled kid and Wulf, our Dark Hunter of the hour, an overprotective oaf. Ms. Kenyon’s love of the word “predator” just doesn’t initially fly here.

This book in some respects is very playful. Wulf’s squire, Chris, is actually his great, great, great (add as many greats as you can sputter off for a 1000 something year old vamp-like dude), grandson and the only human who can remember Wulf after meeting him.

You see, Wulf is cursed. Humans can’t remember him five minutes after they leave his presence. So the dude has a lonely life. There are some of the supernaturals that can recall him, but of course we all know by now that Dark Hunters drain each other’s powers when they spend too much time together and, well, everyone else is mostly evil or somewhat intolerant of hanging with Dark Hunters.

But that’s not even the interesting part of the story. It’s poignant, but not the meat and potatoes of the goings-on in this volume. The fact that Cassandra is an Apollite is.

What does that mean to Wulf? It means he really shouldn’t be with her, in love with her, or even friends with her. He kills her people when they go Daimon. So what we have here is some interracial dating. How’s that for modern genetic diversity?

The rest of the story is gravy, like the sex, like the big bad coming after Cassandra for being not just an Apollite, but one that holds the fate of the world in her hands. In her hands? How ’bout with the threads of her very soul?

We also meet some new characters, like Stryker and Urian, two bad ass Spathis. Their tales are quite the curious ones and maybe even a surprise and who is this Kat? She’s got some duality going on. We have to wonder if that’s a good thing or not.

All in all Kiss of the Night eventually delivers in Kenyon’s grand DH style. You’ll have to crawl through the initial “dream sex” sequences and the boring university crap, but oh well. (You know she could have played on Chris’s attraction to the woman Wulf eventually gets, but oh well. How many pages can you actually burn on this stuff?) But it’s all worth it.
It becomes an exciting adventure with sex, mayhem and the best part of it? Kenyon actually creates a little uncertainty. There are few things that you want to happen, but will it? Can it be possible and if it is, should it be possible? What does Ash sometimes say?

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

That was Ash, wasn’t it?

Have fun, creatures of the night. I will, I’m off for some Night Play!!!!!

© 2008

Research Bites

Research bites.

Right now I’m researching for my very first paranormal romance. That fact is basically why this blog has been focusing so much on that area of the paranormal. I won’t focus on the romance forever though because my super project is nothing of the sort, but since I’ve yet to finish a novel, I thought I would create a smaller world with less political intrigue and one that while it technically spans the ages, I don’t have to weave it too much into our history.

I have written some vignettes of my characters. I’ve found doing so lets me discover the person behind the concept and it leads me to cultural characteristics like slang, style of dress, and general world outlook.

I suppose it is possible to skip the vignettes and just work my way through these things as I write the story, but I don’t seem to work that way. I need a foundation before I start. Otherwise, I get caught up in the nuance and ignore the story line or vice versa.

In essence the pieces come out flat, without any texture.

Anyway, I’ve decided on werewolves and vampires. Yes, it’s been done a hundred times by now, but I have my own spin on it. It will have gods and lots of cool characters. I even have a freaking plot!!

It’s funny. I am a good writer in terms of quick stints, vignettes, and flushing out characters and dialogue. That part of it comes very naturally to me. But novels are different.

In a novel a writer has to captivate the reader page after page. You have to control the ebb and flow of the story. You can’t pile too much adventure into a story at once. You have to give the reader a break, before you continue pummeling him/her with excitement.

And you can’t be too boring either.

And you have to have reasonable motivation.

I read a book, a werewolf one in the recent past. Hmmm, when I say “read” that implies I finished the book doesn’t it?

I didn’t. I didn’t get past the first chapter and I sold it then next week. It was the worst book I’d ever read and I was offended that publishers dared to put that on the shelves and try to pass it off as literature.

Even paranormal romance has to be smart.

I think you can do whatever you want in a book. I can have pig men that get their strength from eating the toenails clippings of blonde females while they battle the Greek pantheon in order to save the world from demonic muskrats as long as I work within the parameters of my own created law and the characters never betray who they are.

I can do this story as long as it’s balanced between the fantastic and the logical, as long as it is balanced between adventure and the mundane. Essentially, you have to be able to identify with my pig men and demon muskrats. Otherwise, the whole damn thing is just silly.

And crap to boot.

So, I know all of this. I understand all of this, but knowing and doing are not the same thing.

I told my friend the other day that I was going to write a paranormal romance. She scoffed. “That’s junk.” She told me. Well yes, paranormal romance will never stand next to greats like Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain, but the genre isn’t aiming for that. The genre has a specific target and quite frankly in this day and age, no market is full of dumbasses.

Readers of horror, science fiction, mystery, romance, and of every genre and subgenre are intelligent and expect a level of competency from the author, even if the basic story line is cliché.

So, even my “junk” has to be intelligent junk. It has to be balanced, have believable characters, logical motivation, a good story line and over all it has to be fun.

Fun.

That’s why we bother isn’t it? That’s why we’re not chomping at the bit to read Tolstoy at our lunch breaks. Don’t get me wrong. I read Shakespeare. I’ve read the Odyssey and the Iliad. I’ve read Dante’s Inferno and Little Women. I’ve done my time in the “real” literary world and I will go back again, but sometimes I want a hunk of man saving some soft piece of ….

Well, I want some fun. I’m hoping I can get it all together and write some of it, too. I’ve been doing a lot of research in the midst of reading the genre. I’m going to spend the rest of the month in that mode and I’m going to do NanoWrimo this year. I’ll be ready like I’ve never been ready before and hopefully I won’t stop at 30,000 words. Hopefully, I’ll stop when the story is ready too, not when I am. ~Lilia

Fantasy Lover:Sherrilyn Kenyon-Book One

Since I posted a review on the first three official Dark Hunter books and am calling them books two to three, I thought I should post a review on the unofficial book one, Fantasy Lover.

Fantasy Lover is connected to the Dark Hunter series, but isn’t a Dark Hunter novel.

Huh?

Okay, from what I understand Ms. Kenyon wrote the book to test the waters. She didn’t think her vampy thing would fly so she tossed out Fantasy Lover, a book about a half god stuck in a book who is has been cursed for eternity to be a pleasure slave for women.

Sounds blah doesn’t it?

When I picked up the book thinking it was book one in the Dark Hunter series I was expecting something quite different from what I got. Grace and Julian were um, not what I expected, but I have to say the book was enjoyable. I spent the whole time wanting something else, but that’s not the books fault. I was tossing it back expecting cherry cola and getting peach iced tea. The iced tea didn’t suck I was just expecting something entirely different.

So, here’s the thing. Read the book only if you want to. It’s not a requirement to the series. Having said that though, I suggest you read the book.

For one, Julian is the next main character’s best friend. Kyrian and Julian go way back. The tie in to Fantasy Lover in Night Embrace is sweet, creates a feeling of connection in the reader and makes you understand Kyrian better since in Fantasy Lover, Julian reflected on him quite a bit.

Plus, the duo are mentioned here and there in the next installments I’ve read.

I also have a notion that they may show up when we see Valerius again. (I’m assuming his story is coming up because he’s Zarek’s brother and the son of the man who killed Kyrian in his human life. Didn’t I tell you you’d need a score card?)

Basically, Fantasy Lover is a good, quick read, with the paranormal laced in, but not on the vampy, Dark Hunter level. Expect a more traditional romance story with some really nice sex scenes and some awesome flashbacks. Kenyon does a nice job giving you a sense of Julian’s past and I will guarantee you will like him, even if he’s not the “one” for you.


© 2008

Dance With the Devil: Sherrilyn Kenyon-Book Four

Oh crimenies

I think I dared to compare Zsadist to Zarek in one of my recent posts. I dared mock the Z thing, the slave thing and the whole vampy fang thing.

I was wrong.

Mister Zarek is nothing like our vamp man Zsadist and his story doesn’t compare beyond the shallow.

In Dance with the Devil we get to tame the beast, be the one that melts the ice away from an angry, joyless heart and we get to do it as a nymph.

Our heroine this time around is Astrid. Don’t worry the name is old fashioned, but it works well with the plot. Albeit it lets our Zarek speak poetically.

I can’t tell you what I liked so much about this one. I liked it better than Night Embrace, not that Night Embrace was bad, but perhaps Zarek’s emo, trodden on life speaks more to me.

And of course, one often likes romance books better if they can relate to the chick and I could this time, though I don’t have to deal with her emotional or rather unemotional issues.

This book is also more self contained. The new characters are not crammed down you’re throat, but placed seamlessly into the story which takes place mostly in Alaska. Believe me though, this book is anything but cold. It sizzles, it makes you want to cry and man does it make you want to be smile, too.

Of course while Zarek is being judged for possible execution, we learn about more about Acheron. Acheron is the thread that ties all these books together. I have to say I like that.

In many of these books, you learn to love a character then he’s just a memory. Maybe he makes a call to the current focus character, but otherwise he’s practically forgotten. Stringing Acheron through these books has maintained a level of familiarity that I really like. Not to mention, he’s hot.

Again I leave you with buy it, read it. Trust me you will read happy with this one.

© 2008

Stray:Rachel Vincent-Book One

Here’s the story rundown. Faythe is a werecat gone to college to seek out a normal life. Her pride however, has been watching her. This is a good thing because when she’s attacked by a stray, things get a little hairy.

Wow, doesn’t that sound like a TV blurb? Or maybe a movie preview? I should’ve started out with

“In a world…”

But I don’t have the large booming voice to pull that off.

All kidding aside, Stray is Rachel Vincent’s first time out and it’s a good introduction. For those of you who like the spunk of Anita Blake you’ll like Faythe, the ever strong, miss independent. But unlike Anita, Faythe doesn’t carry her chip on her shoulder. She knows when to let down her hair and cast the tough act aside. Certainly this is a good thing right? We never like it when a man doesn’t just chill.

The book is a good read, a little sharper on the action and is reminiscent of Kim Harrison and Kelley Armstrong who both put appearances on the front and back covers. The book is one of those “tween” styles. It’s not quite romance, but it’s not exactly not romance either. I would call it a good story with teeth. It’s fun, fast past and the characters are interesting.

You’ll find a nice diversion from your typical paranormal romance and again, I wouldn’t exactly call this a paranormal romance.

In any case, I’d read it again and am planning to buy Vincent’s new book Rogue and the upcoming Pride.

Here’s her blog/website: http://rachelvincent.com/

The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series: J.R. Ward

I read the Black Dagger Brotherhood Series very recently. This was my first jaunt into actual paranormal romance. I have to admit I was very hesitant. You see, I was one of those horror snobs that needed a little more than a hot vamp running around town saving some supercharged damsel in distress. After all, I am a Anne Rice fan.

At this point I’d been reading Kelly Armstrong and Kim Harrison. I found Kim first and loved her. Then I found Ms. Armstrong and liked her more. I was in love with the paranormal once again and for some reason this new wave was more fun than Anne and not as bubblegum as Laurel K. Hamilton.

I was elated to find books of worth in my beloved genre.

But I couldn’t find them, find them. I had no idea that there was even a paranormal romance genre until I picked up a copy of Writer’s Digest.

Then a friend suggested J.R. Ward. I respect my friend a lot and put it on my reading list. I looked for the book and couldn’t find it. I’m was at Borders searching through the Fantasy/Sci-Fi section. It made sense, that’s where I found Harrison and Armstrong.

I ended up having to ask for help and to my surprise, no it was shock and it was an embarrassing shock that I was led to the romance section.

The romance section?

I don’t get it. I’m looking for vampires and werewolves, not swash buckling pirates and billionaires on an emotional mend.

Well, I picked up book one, Dark Lover. Yeah, not my style. The red cover was cool though and I liked the dagger thingy. And my friend said it was good.

Dilemma.

Buy a romance book where others can see me. Pass on a book that an intelligent, respected friend told me was good.

Yikes, I felt like a 20 something man sent out to buy tampons for his chick. I swallowed, picked it up and bought the book with my head held high. I’m Lilia for god sake, I have no shame.

Ah, but I did and bought the book anyway. I can tell you right now I have no regrets and if there is any one out there who feels shame in buying it, give me the cash and I’ll do the buying.

So, here is my take on the Black Dagger Series. I’ve read all that’s out and am waiting on Ms. Ward to crank out the next few. There has to be a next few. There has to be.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series:

In Dark Lover we meet head vamp dude, Wrath. Yeah, it’s actually Wrath. It takes a bit to get used to the name, but you got to or else you won’t make it through this well written series. But hey his chick’s name is Beth so all is good.

I’ll admit, I came across the name and I wanted to dump the book, but I read on and ended up being hooked on the series. There’s passion in these pages, a nice love story and a masterful set up for the rest of the series that I didn’t really appreciate until book three. After a while my brain was trained to pick up on the cues.

I think I was assuming that the book was going to be pure trash. It wasn’t. Ward creates a sexy world that can easily integrate into ours. And the best part is that she sticks to her guns. None of her characters break the rules.

Whatever you want to say about the premise or the genre, you can’t say that it doesn’t follow its own law and really, that’s all a writer has to do to create a viable, believable alternate world and Ward does this with simple genius and won my cynical heart over. Simply put, I’m a fan. So I was revving for book two big time.

Book two, Lover Eternal, stars Rhage our super handsome vamp nick named Hollywood for his well, super good looks. He’s got some issues though, but what romance hero doesn’t have some issues? It’s all good though because the sweet, but apparently bland looking Mary Luce is coming to the rescue. Or is she? Can she save our cursed warrior?

I won’t tell you, but I can tell you this book is for the girl who doesn’t feel as beautiful, whose been through a lot of physical trauma and who doesn’t think she can stand next to a beautiful man and be loved. She can here. She can be a princess standing next to her true love.

And then we can have beauty and the beast.

Lover Awakened focuses on our dark, seemingly untrustworthy Zsadist. Zsadist has been through a lot. He is tormented to the point of true self hate and tries to push that out around him.

Bella though, the beautiful aristocratic vampire is drawn to him, wants him and to tell you the truth I didn’t get why.

Why bother with Zsadist? I don’t want to read about an ex-slave. I don’t want to deal with someone who does the D/s backwards. I want a strong man, not a man filled with bitter angst.

But you know, by the end of the book I cared. I wanted him to make it. I needed him and Bella to be something to each other even though…even though it would break someone’s heart. Speaking of hearts…


Hearts come together in book four. Lover Revealed cements Butch in the vamp clan. But who is Butch? Butch is the human cop from Beth’s past life. He’s found his way into the groove of the vamp war and has a special place in battling the Lessening Society.

Lessening Society?

They are the big bad and you get to know them from book one and you will get to know them, very well.

And we can’t forget love, humans are allowed to fall in love too aren’t they? You’ll have to read on to see if Butch can truly have a future with the vampire Marissa. Should she be with a human? Hasn’t she suffered enough shame?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe there is no shame.

But you gotta buy and you gotta read. If I buy the book for you though, there’ll be a cover charge.

This brings us to Vishous and Doc Jane. We’ve already met the domly Vishous. Yeah, I am talking about the kinky stuff. Yum. Yum. God damned Yum. But we meet Jane for the first time, a human doctor.

And of course there be trouble. Is there ever not any trouble?

Lover Unbound has to find a way to get the human Dr. together with Vishous who has this thing with his hand. Oh, but we learn why he has this thing with his hand and, and…I can’t tell you what happens, but it’s good. The story is fun and well, there’s sex.

I think getting laid is a very good thing.

And there are many, many good things about this series. The best parts are the characters. I like them. I care for them. I want to see them happy. And though Phury wasn’t my fav character in the bunch, by the end of book six, Lover Enshrined, he found a very special place in my heart.

Ward does a nice job with exploring addiction in this book. I wasn’t too keen on it at first, but watching Phury go through hell, understanding his life, his past, his problems with his twin, Zsadist, I couldn’t help but be captivated by his story.

I actually cried. I wept for this character and up until now I hadn’t been moved too far by anything in the series. I might have teared up. My heart might have gone out to the other characters, but none of them made me weep like Phury did. Everything else was relatively a fun ride. This book made me think.

This book made me sad. This book made me happy. This book satisfied in a way I hadn’t expected. I can’t wait for Ward to spin her magic again. The series has so far been a hard, fast romp, through a world I’m in love with. By no means have I shown you the true intricacy of the stories.

There are more characters to be had an more than a handful of connections to, that will keep you reading and reading. We still have John and his merry band of friends and what of our sympath? What is a sympath you ask? Sexy, is all you need to know and well I have to thank J. R. Ward for bringing me my first, true paranormal romance and for rocking my world.

You broke my cherry Ms. Ward and I loved every grinding minute of it. And I wanna do it some more.




Here’s the site. http://www.jrward.com/