Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

In this story we are introduced to October "Toby" Daye, (or at least I was) but a quick glance at the cover suggests that there are (or will be) other stories starring this half human-half fae woman. Here I must admit to a small bias on the part of the reviewer for halflings/halfbreeds/mixed heritage persons of any sort, that is, if the character is even minimally developed. There is just something about the struggle to assimilate two, usually conflicting, cultures into a manageable perspective that appeals to me. But let's put this aside aside and get on with the review...





We start of with a glimpse of Toby's life as a fully 'human' character. She had decided to reduce her ties to faerie in favor of marriage and family, you know, the whole 'white picket fence' thing. So she is happily indulging in a typically human life. Her family is, of course, completely unaware of her mixed heritage. She works as a private investigator, mostly human jobs but she does occasionally work for the fae, and she is in fact on an important assignment for her fae liege Lord. While she is on this stake-out (trying to find her Lord's missing wife and child) she is caught out and turned into a koi and she languishes in this state for 14 1/2 years.

After spending over a decade as a goldfish, she is understandably bitter. She cannot return to her human family (they thought she was dead and upon her return, thought she abandoned them) and she is pretty pissed off at the fae, in general. Yes, we have a dual heritage strife! Whoo hoo!

So, she settles into a mundane and solitary life working as a grocery clerk. Several of her former fae acquaintances have made attempts to contact her and re-involve themselves in her life but she wants nothing to do with it, or them rather. She is quite content to scrape by with her lowly but satisfyingly solitary clerk position and has decided that her two cats are all the company she needs.

So she goes, if not merrily, as contentedly as possible, about her life until one day she returns home to discover a series of messages on her answering machine from a former fae friend (of sorts), Countess Evening Winterrose. In a series of increasingly alarming messages, Winterrose begs Toby to come to her, to help her because she is in some vague, yet deadly, danger. The messages culminate in Winterrose leaving a binding/curse on Toby (apparently answering machines transmit such things perfectly well) and she is then killed while still on the line. Toby is now forcibly bound to discover who has killed Winterrose and if she does not succeed in an unspecified amount of time, she will die herself. Talk about some motivation eh?

Toby resents the binding curse mainly because she would have been compelled to discover who had killed her old friend (of sorts) and perhaps more importantly, why, without it. Now, however, if Toby dallies too long in her efforts toward this 'case' the curse manifests itself in physically painful ways. Toby thus sets out to reintegrate herself into the fae world.

She presents herself to the Queen of Faerie to inform her of Winterrose's death and is basically tossed out on her ass and told to never discuss it again (suspicious eh?). She then tracks down her old boyfriend/man who totally took advantage of her in her early, angst filled youth (readers opinion there) and he agrees to assist her...in fact he seems to have been waiting for her to return to him. Along the way she finds a key which eventually leads her to a box that contains a bit of fae power that should not be left untended. This forces her to track down the prince of cats, a fae named Tybalt. Toby has known Tybalt since early childhood and while he has always been rather cruel to her (but he seems to have some kind of attraction/fascination for her), she feels that he can be trusted to guard the box for her. Eventually she makes her way back to her liege lord, Duke Sylvester and his now returned family, Duchess Luna and their daughter Rayseline. The Duke and Duchess are thrilled to have her return to them and are quick to assure her of their assistance in any way she might need.

So Toby's prospects look pretty good. She has a Duke and a scalawag backing her up and the box that lies at the heart of Winterrose's death is safe. Now she just has to figure out who-dun-it. Her inquiry leads to a slew of mini-adventures, most of which are rather entertaining. It becomes apparent fairly quickly that someone is gunning for her, as if the curse wasn't enough! So now she is dodging assassins as she searches and it's becoming ever more difficult to know who she can trust. On top of all that, she still has two cats to feed and she's about to lose her job!

Of course in the end Toby manages to figure out who killed Winterrose so the curse is lifted. She had plenty of close calls but as I mentioned at the top, this appears to be a series so it was a given that she would survive.

It is of note that as she goes along on her quest she encounters a variety of fae, all of whom are described in great detail. This is one part of the book that I thought was very well done. Rather than having all of the fae look like versions of Tinkerbell or a Keebler elf, they are divide up into species, of sorts, and tend to take their characteristics from animals. The Duchess for example, has a relation to foxes and as such has pointed teeth and three luxurious tails. The hierarchy among the fae and their half-blood relations is also explored and exemplified along the way. I had expected that the conflicts would be more race related but the underlying issue really seems to be class. The full blooded fae are more powerful (magic-wise) and they have the potential for immortality. This leads to a superiority issue when they deal with their half-blood relatives who are much weaker in their practice of magic and they will only live for a few centuries. These tidbits really help to flesh out the version of faerie that the author presents. In fact, though the storyline itself is engaging and fast paced, I rather enjoyed the side-notes into her relationship with each of the fae she encounters. The reader gets to know the background of each person in just the right amount of detail, that is, we learn about each character without drowning in information or slowing the pace of the story.

Overall, Seanan McGuire's version of fae, coupled with a capable heroine makes this a book worth reading. Toby does not expect a man to rescue her (gasp!). She might note her weaknesses but unlike so many (too many) portrayals of female heroines, she does not dwell on them. The only time Toby was concerned about her appearance was when she was weakened by sunlight and her glamor slipped, exposing her pointed ears and strange eyes to mortal view. This may not be the best book ever but it is definitely worth reading. I, personally, am looking forward to the next installment...cough, cough *hint* Frizzy....

Verdict: B+

Murky Tale of a Super Minority: The Gilda Stories

When I read a review of Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories, I had great hopes for it.  Where else have you ever encountered a black, feminist, female, lesbian vampire?  Where else have these adjectives come together into a story of meaningful interactions between immortal beings?  Please, give me some other examples.  I was under the impression (based on this dubious review) that this book was a well hidden gem of a novel, obscured from public view by more "popular" vampire tales, like Twilight.  Ha!

The Gilda Stories is not a bad book.  I have read much worse books.  However, I would not recommend this book to anyone.  The entire first chapter refers to the protagonist as the Girl.  Capital "G".  (Personally, I think a capital in this sense is a tired literary technique of drawing attention to a character.  But the entire chapter is about the Girl... so why force the reader to be shocked by the word Girl so often... totally unnecessary and, frankly, ungrammatical.)  The writing in the first chapter is also aggravatingly murky.  I had to reread paragraphs.  Now, I know in some instances rereading is necessary, like when you are reading philosophy.  Rereading paragraphs in a novel should not happen unless you are rereading the entire novel.  I just couldn't get what Gomez was trying to say the first time.  Yeah, I remember thinking during the first chapter that I might not make it.

So, the girl, or pardon, the Girl is a run away slave in 1850 who gets adopted by lesbian vampires (vampires seem to be capable of playing for any team they feel like).  The one vampire is called Gilda... but then goes to true death, so the Girl becomes Gilda (thank god).  There are something like 8 chapters, and they are all pretty long. (And you know how I feel about long chapters.)  But each one is set in a different age and place. (Because vampires are immortal, ya dig?)  So, we get to see American history develop through Gilda's eyes.  It's vaguely interesting.  And her interactions with other vampires are vaguely interesting.  And the writing was decidedly less murky after the "Girl" nonsense was over.  And there was a bit in the middle where they were trying to trap a rogue vampire named Fox that was truly entertaining.

But mostly it was exhausting.  Every chapter was in a different time, a different place, Gilda would have a different profession (hair dresser, brothel owner, jazz singer, author, etc).  And you would have to read several pages to know where her friends and lovers were and whether they were okay or not.  It's a lot of work for the reader.  A lot of thinking.  Puzzling.  Not quite understanding this particular version of vampire mythology.  There was a nice part of it.  The good vampires were able to leave some thing with their victims in return for the gift of blood, like a good feeling, good dreams, help with decisions, a mental push in the right direction.    It was a nice sentiment.

After the chapter where Gilda was a world famous writer, the writing, (ironically?) started to go downhill again.  Plus, the dates started to plunge into the future, 2020, 2050... yeah, it got a little ridiculous.  You could tell Gomez was trying to tie the book up nice.  She mostly managed to tie it up oddly.  Suddenly, there's Hunters (again with the caps, gah!) who trap vampires and use their blood to make rich greedy people live forever.  And the world has been ruined, people are moving Off-world.  She escapes the Hunters and moves to South America.  It's real cute.  They vampires will save the world.  Whoop-ti-do.

Like I said, it wasn't a bad book, but the same concept could have been done a lot better.  The black, feminist, female, lesbian vampire needs another chance, far away from an author who is trying to be profound.  And the sex scenes weren't even that good.  And while I still would have rather read this than Twilight, I think I would at least have a handle on what was going on in Twilight.  This is what I get for believing books reviews written by random bloggers... hmmm. =)

So long and thanks for all the fish!

"Lola Carlyle Reveals All" by Rachel Gibson

At first glance, I'm not too terribly impressed with the characters in this book. Lola is a retired underwear model and Max is a covert ops agent. Max has "commandeered" a yacht in the Bahamas- a yacht which Lola happens to have fallen asleep on. (It isn't her yacht, but friends of hers.) Max has run afoul of a drug lord (by killing his son), and Lola is hiding from the public after her ex-boyfriend started a website with embarrassing nudie photos of her.

GPS is consistently referred to as Global Positioning System. It's very distracting. Pushing that aside, Lola is recovering from bulemia. This is mentioned a lot. Max is a hard-hearted soldierman, so basically a cardboard cut-out. Lola fires off a flare-gun which melts the control board of the yacht and leaves them stranded in the Bermuda triangle.

Lola compares Max to Ted Bundy; charming but dangerous. Lolz. Max thinks about his entry into the super sekret skwerril spy business, which is supposed to show how tough and capable he is. Then Lola thinks about her current career as a lingere designer, which is supposed to show how tough and capable she is. My reaction: eh. Lola takes care of herself, but doesn't spare a thought for the little yappy dog she carries around. Max shows the dog more attention than she does. Lola's more concerned that Max won't catch on that she's not wearing underwear. In fact, a lot more of the text is devoted to her lacy pink underthings than the damned dog.

Lola's dog falls in the ocean, she jumps in after it, and Max has to jump in to save them both. Then we get into the first kiss. Max kisses Lola after rescuing her....to stop her from hyperventilating. Um, whut? At this point, I'm irritated enough with Lola's behavior that I'd rather she pass out.

Through the course of the entire book, Lola wins at nothing but being sexy. Which is... not sexy. And frankly, I don't know how she managed to start her own business. She seems to be completely useless in a crisis and unable to think rationally about, well, anything.

There is a storm, and they land on an island which thankfully has fresh water. Lola's first act when they find the water spring is to...
...
...
...
Reapply her makeup.

Whut.

And pluck her brows.

Whut.

Why did she bring this crap with her from the yacht?! And side note, I don't think standard makeup cases are waterproof.

Then the sex scene. Ugh. It goes something like this:
Lola: Let's have sex! There are condoms on the yacht!
Max: Forget the condoms, I'm clean!
Lola: OKAY!

But before they have the sexytimes, mysterious ne'er-do-wells show up. They hide, but Baby (Lola's dog) runs up to them and starts yapping. While Max (the idiot) is planning on how to rescue the dog, Lola convinces him to sex her up. It's rather hilarious and also somewhat sad that the word penis is used several times, but Lola's genitalia are not mentioned at all.

If you're still interested in reading the book, that's on you. All-in-all, I found it rather disappointing. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed one of the author's other books (The Trouble with Valentine's Day). If you're into suspense, it's not very suspenseful. If you're into strong heroines, Lola falls short. If you're into complex characters, find another book.

Dancing with Werewolves by Carole Nelson Douglas

"It was the revelation of the millennium: witches, werewolves, vampires, and other supernaturals are real. Fast-forward thirteen years: TV reporter Delilah Street used to cover the small-town bogeyman beat back in Kansas, but now, in high-octane Las Vegas--which is run by a werewolf mob--she finds herself holding back the very gates of Hell. At least she has a hot new guy and one big bad wolfhound to help her out..."


First things first I have to warn you, there is absolutely no dancing with werewolves in this book. There is a brief scene in which our heroine dances with a (maybe?) vampire but that's it. I guess you really shouldn't judge a book by its cover, er title...

In this book, we are introduced to Delilah Street, so named for the street she was supposedly found on. Yep, we got us an orphan heroine so we know already that the mystery of her origins is going to come into play at some point (yawn). We get periodic flashbacks that offer glimpses into her childhood, she was raised in group homes with mean vampire/would be rapist boys and strange dreamlike impressions of painful penetration by some kind of metallic thing. This gives some meat to her early description (by a would be suitor-vampire) as 'frigid'.
Normally the back story wouldn't be that important this early but as the cataclysmic event that drives Delilah from Kansas to Las Vegas happens early on, it's useful to know. So, let's move onto the story itself shall we?

After a hard day of reporting on bloated, internally dissolved cows, Delilah heads home to watch a CSI-like program based out of Las Vegas. At the end of the show there is a cameo of a corpse who is a dead-ringer (pun intended) for Delilah. Worrisome isn't it? Could this be a long lost twin? Who is that woman with the maggot in her nose? Unfortunately Delilah has a date coming over so she can't investigate...yet.
Delilah's date is with a vampire coworker, he's the news anchor, and it doesn't go well. It goes so horribly wrong that he manages to steal her spot at the station and turn the weather girl (weather witch) against her. Delilah finds herself demoted at work and goes home to find her cabin/cottage reduced to splinters from a freak tornado that only touched down at that particular spot. What can she do but pack up to go to Las Vegas to track down the corpse extra from the television program? (As opposed to, I don't know, fighting for her job and maybe finding a new place to live in town??)

So Delilah heads off to Vegas where she promptly meets Ric, a dowser for the dead, who promptly gets his arms around her to show her how to dowse for water, which promptly leads to a psychic awakening in Delilah as they discover a murdered couple, dating back 40 years or so. Oh yea, it's all erotically charged and they sort of dry hump right then and there. 'Cause nothing is hotter than bludgeoned corpse visions right?
Ric also has a tip for her to get in to Hector's (producer of that CSI show with the dopplganger corpse) fortress-like home. She gets in, he thinks she's the corpse, who actually was a corpse and he then offers her a place to live on the grounds. Huh?
After a whirlwind exploration of Vegas and acquiring a giant wolfhound, Delilah is set upon by not one, but two gangs of would-be collectors. Apparently her resemblance to the corpse is enough to make people want to kidnap her to rent her out and/or kill her again on film. M'Kay...
So naturally Delilah moves in with Hector. Meanwhile she is starting her own PI business, gotta figure out who those corpses were right?

Quick sum up: we have a woman who has her latent psychic powers awakened by a man. She requires the protection of a man, to save her from other men who want to collect her. Oh, and she has a huge dog.

So Delilah heads off to track down the origins of these corpses, mixing in with all sorts of supernaturals in the process. We have the albino vampire (maybe?) who seems to be helpful. At any rate he tricked her into accepting a talisman that seems to track and protect her. We have the werewolf casino owner/mafia boss who kidnaps her to force her into a magic show. We have the magician and his creepy fae assistants. The magician helps her develop her special mirror walking ability while the fae assistants try to kill her, then help her escape instead. Meanwhile, she discovers that the female half of the corpse couple that she found with Ric was the daughter of the man who kidnapped her. Whew!

Sum up squared: Gets kidnapped. Discovers another latent ability with the help of yet another man. Runs back to Hector's safe house.

The bulk of the book focuses on the developing relationship she has with Ric. They even get to the point of sex. She can't lay back because of the trauma of her nightmares so to make it easier on her, she loses her virginity doggie-style. WTF?? Ouch! Good thing they are in love...already...

Towards the end Delilah goes back to the casino to get proof (via a photo) that the female corpse really is dudes daughter. By then she is speculating that the man was a vampire since in those days the vampire/werewolf war was in full swing (If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned that before it's because is so shrouded in mystery that there isn't anything to say about it). Guess what happens next! Go on, I'll wait...that's right, she gets captured again. This time it isn't going to be all fun and games like being forced into a stage magician show though, nope, this time they are going to take her out into the hills for hunting.
So she's out in the boonies in a houseful of werewolves and after some debate as to whether or not they ought to sell her or pimp her, she is set 'free' to run so they can hunt her down and kill her. Finally we get to see Delilah taking action! Oh wait, it's our albino vampires' (maybe?) talisman that gets her off the porch and a bit of a head start. So she's running, and running, and running (seriously, head start or no, who stays ahead of a wolf??) when, miraculously, she runs into Ric! Ric whips out his gun and starts shooting her pursuers, telling her to keep going...such a hero and all right? (gag) Finally she is cornered and (gasp!) she discovers another latent talent, all by herself even! She surrounds herself with ghost wolves which keeps her attackers at bay (heh, get it?) until the zombies show up to tear the werewolves limb from limb.
Wait a second here, where the 'eff did the zombies come from? Oh, look, there's Ric...not only can he find the dead apparently he can raise them as well! Yea for super powers!

Sum up cubed: Gets caught again, by the same bad guys as before. Discovers yet another hidden talent (all by herself even!). Gets rescued by a man.

After all that Delilah heads back to Hector's. And then...the story just ends!



So ultimately we have a heroine who is a weak, sexually repressed, co-dependent mess. She managed to alienate her audience (me) with all of her internal whining and the obliviousness of her actions. Toward the end of the book I was starting to hope that she would just die and get it over with...after all, how many times can one woman really expect to be rescued?? The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to find out what the deal was with the dead couple. Imagine my irritation when the story ends with nothing more than the identity of the woman. Seriously?? All that build up and it's just left as a cliffhanger?

I could deal with the identity of the CSI corpse left undiscovered, I didn't need to have the origins of Delilah's super-duper powers spelled out but I think I deserved a bit of closure in the 'mystery' that drove the storyline! Suffice to say, I will not be reading the next installment.

Verdict: Story FAIL.

Not Today or Even on Doomsday

Okra and Glue
Lori Handeland's Any Given Doomsday
I found wrote this review for a knitting forum back in January.
Not sure where to start.......
We meet a Elizabeth Phoenix, a psychic ex-cop who was raised in a foster home and has a huge chip on her shoulder.
Original… You were thinking that, right?
Now, I like urban fantasy and this was a great read. But the woman in me was left feeling abused by this story.  The not-quite feminist, quasi-liberal, closet conservative woman in me.

First, Phoenix’s foster mother is murdered and through her death she passes on these super special powers.
That was okay, I guess..
Dramatic event leads to serious life changes.  I watch Criminal Minds, I get it.

She cannot access this power and requires the aid of a MAN to help her become the ass kicking uberpsychic she was foretold to become. I don’t mean in some mystical Native American ritualistic manner. Because being left in the wilderness with just a knife is lame....

Oh wait, did I mention that she must seek out the incredibly handsome and underclothed Sawyer, a mysterious Native American skinwalker for psychic accession? Ever hear the story about the magical minority? Cliche’
So she leaves her job as a part-time waitress in a cop bar to go cross country.
If you are thinking sweat huts or smoking pipes, get your mind in teh gutter. That is right, he screws her so that she can become the One.

Besides, she really needed to get laid anyway and she mentions several times how long she has been without sex.
Guess what? As STD’s goes she has a problem. She is an empath and when she sexes up someone she gains their powers. See where this is going?

Every man in her life is an enigma. She can’t tell if they are good or bad so she screws them. Despite this clever tactic, somehow she manages to remain a sarcastic bitch to them even after she screws them.
Let’s talk about sex.
Sex kills. Sex enlightens. Sex enslaves. Sex empowers. Sex heals.
Seriously. She gets her sex on in this story and so do the male leads. Besides Sawyer there is Jimmy. A dampir, a human and vampire hybrid. Jimmy became her first love and her foster brother when they were kids. BTW, as it goes this dhampir has daddy issues.  Creepy…

When she encounters a Berserker, an angry bear-like warrior killer, in her bedroom….

…he rose. And rose. and rose. Yep, naked all the way down to his toes - a particularly long distance since I put him in the vicinity of six seven. And the adage of about big feet, big - well you know the one - this guy appeared to have invented it,

Overall the men help her, ignore her, use her and then disappear throughout the book.
After the big battle with the Jimmy’s blood-sucking relatives, does she regroup and meet with the other warriors for good? Hell no. She goes back to bartending. WTF!!!!

I really did not like Liz, sexually habits aside, she was a selfish, hard-headed bitch who walks into really obviously bad situations despite being a former cop and it worried me that she will whore herself to every supernatural creature in order to achieve the power needed to stop the apocalypse.

Did I forget to mention the fairy?

They Read It So We Didn't Have To: Twilight

This is a new segment we're adding to the blog called "They Read It So We Didn't Have To". We sometimes hear other people complain about books so much that we don't even want to waste the time reading them ourselves. So, why not let the poor sots who went through the trouble of reading the crackpot lit speak for themselves? What follows is a collection of links to other readers reviews of individual Twilight books or critiques of the series as a while, and because the Twilight series is of such wide cultural influence, there are a few references to the Twilight movies as well. These links are arranged vaguely by topic for your reading pleasure.

Walkthrough by rdxdave.

Girls just wanna have fangs.

Is Twilight good for young women?

Chastity by Twilight.

Lesbian review of New Moon.

Twilight's Hero is Abusive.

New Moon and domestic violence.

This is what a feminist vampire looks like. (slightly off topic, but you'll like it)

What's so Mormon about Twilight?

Stephanie Meyers' Mormonism and the "erotics of abstinence".

Twilight Series is a Primer on Mormonism.

Tells it like it is: 5 things you need to know about Twilight.

Do you have strong opinions about the Twilight series? If the articles above haven't prompted you to at least be superficially critical of these books, then I don't want to hear about it. And if you haven't read Twilight, you can relax, because they read it so you didn't have to!

Love and Marriage, Horse and Carriage: Committed

I would like to take the event of my first post on Okra and Glue to review a possibly contentious book, given the current climate of intense conversation about marriage in our country. The book is Committed by acclaimed author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert. Committed is a follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love in the sense that it follows Gilbert's life in the year or two after the end of the story in Eat, Pray, Love. However, where Eat, Pray, Love was a primer on Gilbert's spiritual journey, cut up into bite-sized mini-chapters that kept you reading out of pure hunger for the next little spiritual insight, Committed is focused entirely on Gilbert's self-conscious mistrust and distaste for the institution of marriage. And while this reviewer is not prepared or interested in comparing the merits of Eat, Pray, Love to those of Committed, I will just go ahead and put out there that there are only two kinds of people who will pick up Committed: 1. Those who really enjoy Gilbert's first book and think she has more to give; 2. Those who are contemplating marriage and think this book will help them understand it better.

I fall firmly into the first category. I liked Eat, Pray, Love (didn't put it down, practically) and I thought Gilbert might be strong enough of a writer to merit another excellent book. I wasn't entirely wrong. It's not a terrible book. There are 8 really long chapters and it's a decent mix between personal/memoir narrative and her thoughts/research on marriage. It drags, I won't lie, but the dragging isn't entirely out of place, given the spot she and her fiance are in.

Here's the back story. In Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert goes on this year long spiritual pilgrimage because her marriage has deteriorated and her new ex-husband has gotten pretty much every cent she had to her name (mostly because she suddenly got the idea that she didn't want to be married to him anymore, and told him so, i.e. there was no REAL reason for the divorce). She managed to con someone into giving her a book deal and the funds up front to do the traveling which would give her the material for the book. She goes to Italy, eats a lot, goes to India, prays a lot, and end up in Bali, and much to her chagrin, falls in LOVE. The man she falls in love with is an Australian born Brazilian, 17 years her senior, who lives in Bali because after his divorce there just wasn't any place for him at home anymore. She calls him Philipe. How charming.

At the end of the book they are together. We all roll our eyes and get on with our lives. However, when Committed shows up, we find out that there is trouble in Paradise. Or rather trouble in the U.S. has caused Philipe to be deported, which means he can only get back and live a normal life with his lover in the States if he marries her. Well, since Philipe has no way to be near her in the U.S., Gilbert consigns herself to traveling the world with him while they wait for various papers to be processed so he could be at the very least eligible for marriage in the States. The problem (because we all know there has to be a problem) is that these two do NOT want to get married. They both hated getting divorced, and don't want to do it again. But they have to, but it's against their vows to one another... Blah, blah, blah...

At this point, I'm thinking, seriously? It's such a hardship that the worst thing which could possibly happen to you is marriage, and all the legal/social benefits that come with it? Really, Gilbert, Really?! Not everyone has someone kicking around to marry if they don't want to get kicked out of the United States for real. It's nice that it's working out for you, how about you give the institution of marriage, as a legal status, some love.

The book is kind of whiny. She doesn't want to, but she has to. Oh noes. Feel bad for her while she teaches you everything you ever didn't want to know about marriage. But really, critically, I think the biggest fault of this book is the SUPER LONG CHAPTERS. I'm the sort of reader that if you don't give me natural breaks in the reading, all the words start to blur together and then I start flipping forward to see where the section or chapter ends. At that point if it's too far, I will likely just put the damn thing down and go to bed. If it's close, I'll be like, OK, I'm going to finish this section. With Committed, there was a lot of putting the damn thing down. It was the anti-thesis of Eat, Pray, Love in this way. And so I hated that about it.

But I'm in the first group of people who picked up this book. If you belong to the second, it is very likely that you will enjoy her insight into marriage, and gain perspective from the stories she tells about marriage in different cultures and how they all compare. She is really quite sensitive to the issue of same sex marriage, and while I find her whole outlook a little pretentious and whiny, she is a good writer and I did finish the book. **pats self on back**

So, people looking marriage in the eye might find this book a useful meditation in preparation for that rite of commitment. But if you were a former Gilbert fan, let me just say, there will be very little for you to eat, pray with, or love about this most recent offering of hers.

Ta!

Dhampirs Need Love, Too.

Hey Okra lovers

As you may know, I tend to avoid violence. I am not entertained by it on the TV, the screen, my life or in a book. Science fiction violence on the other hand, completely entertains me.
I really like vampire violence. Their ability to fly and tone their killer skills for centuries usually makes them invincible. I am not one of those people who want to meet or be a vampire. I do not think that they exist. Zombies on the other hand scare the bejeebus out of me.

I had first heard about hybrid vampires creatures when I watched my first Blade movie. After that I read the Vampire Huntress series. The heroine’s womb is coveted by high ranking vampires. She is the only person on Earth that can bear a daywalker. I read the first four books before the mythology had my head spinning.

I went on to read the first three books of the Dark Series about the Carpathian vampires who are really not vampires. They are blood drinkers, yes, but not undead. Although their race is on the verge of extinction, they can have children and in the few books that I read the males were seeking out human mates. I stopped reading them when I realized that the author had an affinity for using the word “velvet.” I remember the days of the velvet paintings and I did not want to have those images pop in my head every time I read a chapter.

Anyway, I was intrigued by all the manifestations of half human and half vampire people.
Unfortunately, I watched Bloodrayne with high expectations of following a new day-walker. But she was called a dhampir. Despite the A-list and B-list actors the movie sucked cabbage, and I love Billy Zane in everything. There was so much cabbage sucking took place that I am confident to write “someone lost a bet.”

I wanted to scrub my eyes after watching the sex scene. Kristana Loken should be ashamed of the sounds she makes on screen.

The Night Huntress novels by Jeaniene Frost introduced me to a kick-ass dhampir with daddy issues. She lives to please her mother and earn her love but until she bleeds out her vampire blood, her mother will not truly accept her. I loved her and cannot get enough. What daughter doesn’t wonder if her mother is proud of her? How often has a mother told a daughter that she hates her boyfriend even those who are not demon-spawned vampires? I get her. I like her.

So, when I saw this book at the library last December, I had to read it.


The jacket read “Dorina Basarab is a dhampir—half-human, half-vampire. Subject to uncontrollable rages, most dhampirs live very short, very violent lives. So far, Dory has managed to maintain her sanity by unleashing her anger on those demons and vampires who deserve killing.”

I was hooked. I read the book in three days (I still had hooking and knitting to do). Dory is amazing. I liked the first person narrative but her descriptions of the fight scenes are incredibly confusing. The book is in the same world as the Cassie Palmer series which I have not read. I followed along just fine without the backstory. Even so, I will read the short story of Dory’s roommate in On the Prowl. The story introduces Dory and a reader can absorb some of the action in Midnight’s Daughter easier by reading the Cassie Palmer books. I had a few WTF moments that I could have avoided.

Dory is prone to blackouts. On one hand, as a literary technique it makes the author look lazy. On the other hand, I understood Dory’s coping mechanism a lot better. She has more than just Daddy issues. She has serious gaps in her memory that haunt her. Then she starts to have these flashback visions after drinking wine. I know. I was surprised, too. After living for 500 years, she still cannot hold her alcohol.

Her vampire kin wants to kill her on sight. Her roommate is missing. And she has just been summoned by her long lost father.
Leia had some Daddy issues....
In the first chapters she asserts to herself that she is independent of her father’s influence and is getting along just fine living in on her own working as a bad vampire killer. As the novel progresses, I understood that her relationship with her father has more layers than an onion. Dory wants us to believe that in order to find her missing roommate/best friend she will capitalize on her father’s need to have Dracula killed in exchange for his assistance. Nothing more….. Even though, the job is near impossible to complete, I wanted to believe her. In reality, she wants to rid herself the rages caused by her father’s cursed blood; she wants to define her role in the vampire world; and she wants to be recognized for it. I also thinks she wants to flirt with the sexy Master Vampire Louis-Cesare a little, too. She should just focus on killing Dracula.

At the end of the book, I giggled to myself thinking “this girl is an addict and doesn’t even know it.”