From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

This is another installment of the Sookie Stackhouse series, a series which spawned the creation of True Blood on HBO, by the way. Now, I started watching True Blood when it first began and I was totally sucked in...get it? hee hee hee... Anyway, I put off reading the books for awhile because, as we all know, the books and movies/television series that are based off of books never align properly. I liked the show too much to risk 'ruining' it by reading the series...until after the second series when I finally broke down and started reading them. I'm not going to spout off about which is better, that's rather irrelevant for this forum and for my own part, I like them both.

The thing about the Sookie books is that the main character is, well rather annoying. The stories are good but Sookie just irritated the hell out of me. The whole whiny, bad things happen and it's really not my fault, and inability to accept responsibility was just irksome all the way around. However, this book finally shows us a maturing Sookie who, while she is still prone to tantrums and whining, at least recognizes that she is being silly or overreacting, etc. This more fully developed Sookie does have several adventures (gosh being a bartender in a small town is rough!) per usual.

So, we have issues with the local Were community (attempted takeover) that Sookie finds herself stuck in the middle of. We have issues with the vampire community (successful takeover) that Sookie is again smack dab in the middle of and we also have sidelines with Tanya, Sookie's brother Jason, her roommate(s) and Bob the former cat, and to top it off, Sookie meets her Fae great-grandfather and her cousin Hadley's child (who appears to have the same abilities as Sookie).

The storyline is, as always, entertaining and fast paced. I found myself tearing through this book and that dreaded "just a few more pages" that turns into "oh crap it's 6am already!" definitely popped up. The Sookie books, as a whole, are all similar in that way. Most of the stories I've finished in a day and even when Sookie is acting like a total 'tard I still look forward to reading the next...

Overall the Sookie Stackhouse novels are a fun read. They aren't terribly deep or challenging but the are perfect for light entertainment. I am definitely excited to see what happens with this new, wiser Sookie.

PS--the third season of True Blood starts in a couple of weeks so I'm not sure when I will be reading the next book in this series...

Boneshaker: Was this a teen book?

Last Sunday, I read Boneshaker by Cherie Priest all in one day.  Impressive right?  It's not a short book either.  416 pages. And it was full of all sorts of fun stuff.  A steampunk vision of a Civil-War era Seattle.  Zeppelins.  Crazy machines.  A gas seeping from underground that makes people into zombies... I mean what more could you possibly want.

But the fact that I read the book in one day makes me suspicious.  Did I just unwittingly read a teen novel?  Was I fooled by DPL's faulty book organization into reading a book written for high school students?  Or did this fun, if a little awkward, book meet its intended audience in my charming readership? 

Well, I suppose there must be a way to determine this.  First off, it was published by the SyFy conglomerate.  So, someone at SyFy thought this was an appropriate story to attract their viewership to the written word. People who watch SyFy are not necessarily a certain age, they just have a certain group of interests.  Fair enough, so this is inconclusive.

I guess we want to believe that teen novels should be a little tamer than adult novels... which is not necessarily true.  I can bet you that the first sex scene I read was from a "teen novel." I am also pretty sure that there was nothing in this novel that wouldn't be found in an adult novel or a teen novel. There was violent death, there were creepy characters, there were dysfunctional families, and there was evil.  The protagonist was a single mother who had to venture into the walled off city of Seattle which was ensconced in a poinsonous gas they called "the Blight."  The Blight had been unleashed by her deceased husband by his crazy invention, the Boneshaker.  If you breath too much, you die and then sometimes reanimate.  They called the zombies "rotters".  So the mother goes to rescue the son.  The basic structure of the story is "family friendly"; it could easily be made into a Disney film. There is nothing so harsh and cold and evil about the story that I could not end up in the teen book department.  Also, no sex.  Because there is NOTHING romantic about have to wear a mask at all times to keep the Blight out and there is nothing romantic about have to be quiet so the rotters don't catch wind of you.  Nobody was getting it on.  Too dangerous, not enough clean air.

If it is considered an regular novel for adults, it's awful tame. I kind of think that it might have done better on the teen market regardless.  The only other reason I think it might be a teen novel is because I was able to read it in one day.  It was fast; the words were pretty large (they were also printed in dark brown ink instead of black, which I think is cool and show-offish at the same time.)  So, I'm pretty much decided that this is a teen novel.  It's like a coming of age story for the son, and while he's not the "main" character, he does go through finding out that his father was not blameless when it came to the Blight accident.

Sad day.

My last question is about the picture on the front.  Do you think that's the boy, young boys look like girl sometimes?  Or the mother, who really shouldn't be that young looking? I can't figure it out.  I start to lean towards the mother, but then I'm like it could be the son.  Oh bother.

As for whether I liked the book, well I did, but the writing could have been smoother.  I felt like I was reading the awkward examples in writing textbooks on how to create believable dialogue.  It got better as the book went on.  But you can tell this is her first "real" novel.  The cover says "break-out novel".  I think she should write a sequel, in which the son figures out how to either stop the gas and restore Seattle or tame the rotters and take over Vancouver.  Bother are good choices as far as I'm concerned.  If you are tired of your paranormal romance, try this steampunk romp on for size, but don't expect to find it challenging.  Just sayin'.

Savor Me Slowly by Gena Showalter

This book is part of the Alien Huntress series, of which, I believe I've read a couple though I cannot recall the titles off hand. Basically the background of this series is that it takes place on Earth at a time when aliens are no longer sci-fi, they are, in fact, the newest immigrants. There are a variety of species who pop up and while a great many of the new citizens are peaceful, there are of course the occasional 'bad apples' amongst them. This is what prompted the formation of A.I.R. (kind of an FBI type of organization except they deal exclusively with bad aliens). The hero of the book, Jaxon, works for this organization and we begin our story with him trapped in a cell, having been tortured for an unspecified amount of time.

Enter our heroine Mishka Le'Ace. Mishka is an assassin who was created in a lab. She is part human, part machine, part animal (which animal(s) we are never told). This mixture makes her a particularly effective killing machine for whoever owns her at the time. Yep, I said 'owns'. See, it turns out that Mishka has a chip that was implanted in her brain when she was a child that allows her to be controlled by whomever has custody of her control panel. It's not like a remote control, how dull would that be, rather it grants the power of life and death over her and the ability to 'punish' her with excruciating pain at a whim. As you can imagine, this makes for a rather interesting childhood and such.

So Mishka has been ordered to rescue Jaxon. No biggie for our assassin except she finds herself strangely attracted to him. (What a surprise!) So she whisks him away to a safe house provided by her employer/master. Of course Jaxon was not rescued out of the goodness of anyone's heart. She is supposed to find out everything that he knows about a new race of aliens that have come to Earth who have been infecting human women with a nasty virus that causes them to a.) slowly start to rot while living and b.) turn into icky cannibals. As Jaxon is badly injured, Mishka must care for him for several weeks before she can even attempt to interrogate him. Enter strange attraction--it grows between both of them (duh) and eventually they do the deed.

Neither one will admit that they are falling for the other. Ho-hum... Then Jaxon is re-rescued by his teammates from A.I.R. and things start getting more interesting. Two of his teammates have met Mishka before and let's just say they don't like her very much. Oh the tension! Meanwhile, they are still tracking down the mega-STD aliens. It turns out that these aliens have already decimated at least two other planets (one of which was the home-world for an earth-born alien who works for A.I.R., which ties another book in nicely).

Enter action, excitement, blah blah blah... and eventual resolution of both the alien issue and the Jaxon/Mishka issues. Yea for happy endings!

So, overall I did enjoy this book quite a bit. It's definitely light reading but the pace is good the characters are interesting. The romance/sexiness scenes are amusing, if a bit drawn out. I particularly like that there are several areas that tie the stories together. Each book that I've read (so far) is a decent stand alone but they all share an underlying theme that is definitely a build up for the final story. It is done subtly enough to intrigue. I will be interested to read more of the series.

Grade: B+

BEST NEW Paranormal Romance: Part 1

Hey Gluers,

I've got a treat!  I'm reading through an anthology of Paranormal Romance stories... I've gotten half-way and I've decided to give you mini-reviews for each story in the anthology.  This is the book's cover, in case you are driven to go looking for it:

Ok, it's a mixed bag, full of surprises, so I'll get started.

The first story "Follow Me Light" by Elizabeth Bear is kinda strange.  The main character is a very ugly man named Pinky.  And still the narrator sleeps with him/falls in love.  Because she can see his swampy coloured aura, nice.  Also, because, even though he's really really really ugly, he's got an awesome voice.  She says "oh, la" when she hears his voice for the first time. Not to belabor this, he's like a fish god or something, but they're in Arizona, ZOMG DRAMAZ.  Then his fishy brother shows up, things get weird.  It was a strange story.  It was brave to attempt to make a romance with a really ugly fish god man work.  It didn't.  I also don't know why the story is titled as it is.

Story number TWO, "A Maze of Spaces" by Claudia O'Keefe.  I think, well, I read it about a week ago and I can't really remember anything useful about it.  The narrator is the Goddess of Lonely Spaces.  She lives in a creepy part of West Virginia, she falls in love with this guy named Landry.  When they finally consummate their love, she passes her "special gifts" onto him and has to leave the area.  It's weird because she is in control of the whole county, like she can manipulate nature, and the weather.  And she makes people feel lonely, so they leave.  'Nuff said.

Third story is called "The Shadowed Heart" by Catherine Asaro and it takes place in the FUTURE.  And it's on a planet where days and nights are about 30hrs each.  Harrick is 1/4 of a empath team and a bionically modified fighting machine.  The other 3 died in a crash (oh NOES) and he's searching the crash site for something.  He find Rhose.  (LOL!) Rhose got stuck in the crash site because she couldn't make it home before night (which you will remember is about 30 hours). They run into each other, they start to empathize or something... they boink.  Then he goes psycho crazy because the towns people start to attack him (fighting machine, remember).  The only one he won't kill is Rhose, because they are empaths.  It ends well. 

Story number 4. "Walpurgis Afternoon" by Delia Sherman was not romantic.  At least not in the "somebody gets laid" sense of the word.  Maybe in the historical sense or the literary sense.  There are witches.  They are lesbians.  They get married... but that's not the center of the story.  The center of the story is the family next door, and they are already married with children.  Not romantic.  The story is nice and pretty and ends pleasantly.  But it's not romantic.  Get it out!  Gone!

The fifth story is "A Knot of Toads" by Jane Yolen and it is set in Scotland.  This girl comes home because her father has died.  He apparently died of fright.  There's toads everywhere.  Basically it's a witch story, the witches attack the girl.  But at the end of the story... a man saves her!  Wooo!  And of course it's the charming boy from her childhood who's grown into a real man.  However, there is no sex.  Shame.

The 6th story, and final story for this part, is "Calypso in Berlin" by Elizabeth Hand.  This Calypso is the same Calypso from Greek mythology.  She is in love with a man.  More than in love, in fact, he is her muse.  She met him and can't stop painting him.  So she takes him into the forest outside of Berlin and enchants him and paints him for a year and then she lets him go. Sort of anti-climatic...

That's part one... who knows what the rest of the book will bring.

To be continued!

Psy-chics in Love

Okra and Glue folks
I found it.  A series of books that focus on romances with psychics, mediums and clairvoyants. I can rid myself of the Blood trilogy.  

Heather Graham's Harrison Investigation series are ghost stories with emotion.
I have read the first two books of the series so far.
In these books there is attraction, flirting, and by god - kissing.
And sex.
Yup.
Sex.
Adam Harrison founded his investigation company when he learned that his own son had considerably abilities.
He and his employees track individuals with pyschic skills, investigate hauntings, and bed locals. 
In Haunted, Matt Stone the sheriff of a small Virginian town owns his Revolutionary War era family estate with its ghosts and staff.  He does not believe in ghosts.  Original, huh?  
After a honeymooning Bride streaks naked through the home after being accosted by a malicious presence he agrees to permit Harrison Investigators explore the house. The elegant Darcy Tremayne arrives and all hearts are a flutter. 

She dreams each night about a horrible crime that occurred in the estate. The story follows her investigation and his growing impatience with the ghostbuster.  


In The Presence, Toni MacNally and her five best friends rent a Scottish castle to organize dinner theater tours.  Suddenly, the real owner  Bruce MacNiall, appears and they learn that the little play she wrote for the performances are based on real people from MacNiall's family. 
The real Bruce MacNiall is investigating a serial killer that is using his ancestral home as a dumping ground while the Scooby friends continue their performances.  It gets really complicated fast.  I did learn that no one really eats haggis.
There are two mysteries here, the legend of the original Bruce MacNiall and the identity of the serial killer that is seeking the current Bruce MacNiall's attention.   


In both books, characters protest the apparent abilities of the investigators.  This got old fast for me.  The characters denied the haunting while everyone around them screams in terror.
Contrast that with the fact that the main characters fall into each others beds  pretty quickly. For both books, the average time was about 3 days from introduction to coitus.  

What I learned from the books:
True love is easier to believe than the dead communicating with the living.  

The books were quick reads.
Enjoy them for yourself. 

A Bloody Job Under the Moon

Hey O-Gluers!

Are you ready for this?  It's a TWO-FER!

I read A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore AND Under the Blood Red Moon by Mina Hepsen.

So, yeah, it won't be double the length, because it's already 10:30 and I want to go to bed at a reasonable time.

Ok, so A Dirty Job is great.  I like it a lot.  It's funny, self-effacing, witty, and weird.  Charlie Asher becomes a minion of death, which means he collects the objects people put their souls into when they die.  And then evil creatures are trying to take over San Francisco.  There's lots of back story and fun stuff happening and interesting characters.  I don't feel like talking about it.  It is my assertion that the greater majority of the readers of this blog have either read books by Christopher more or in fact read this very book.  So, I'm really not concerned about rehashing the plot.

I just want to ask.  Is it ok for a writer to intentionally niche himself?  Moore writes books that have a similar flavor.  They all have flashy covers, goofy protagonists, and supernatural themes.  So it's an equation that works for him.  So many writers do this, and I'm not sure that I like it.  I mean, he's good at it, so he should keep doing it right?  Or should he try to push himself as a creator of imaginary worlds?  Or are most writers limited to a niche by the type of talent they have?  Because I don't think Moore would have sold many books with poetry, or memoir, or serious novels.

He's a goofball.  And you have to love him, or at least let him amuse you. Like a court jester:

Right on cue.

So, on to Under the Blood Red Moon.

Not a bad first dip into the chilly pool of paranormal romance.  Not a bad go round.  So, it's ridiculous, I mean we have a half Russian princess half English nobility lady named Angelica.  She doesn't really want to get married, but wevs, she has to support her brother with the heart condition ( I don't know why this was necessary except to provide additional dramaz to the part of the book where people were getting drained of blood by rouge vampires and the brother was freaking out.)

So, Angelica is looking for a hub-sand.  Wooo.  But it's HARD FOR HER because she can read minds.  She can hear what everyone is thinking.  All around her.  It makes it hard for her to go to balls, because it makes her crazy and woozy.  And so she hid behind a bush.  Because that made it better.  Sheesh, bushes stop the mind reading.  There's GOT to be a good innuendo in there somewhere.  All of a sudden, she sees this captivating guy.  Woah.  Come to find out, he reads minds too.  So she's ceaselessly attracted to him and has to find out all about him. She meets him and he shows her how to block out all the voices from her mind.  It's like night and day.  One day she is crippled socially, the next day she's gallivanting about and all because of this charming irresistible dude who changed her life... blah blah blah.

Obviously, he's like a 500 year-old vampire.  They flirt around for about half the book.  He's looking for a slayer and the rouge vampire.  She is trying marry this human guy but she can't get Alexander out of her head. We get to the last 1/4 of the book before anyone has any sex at all.  For all the skin and lips on the cover there really should have been dozens of sex scenes.  But they do the nasty once (at the end of a vampire ceremony), and because in 18th century England there are no rubbers, she's showing the next day.  Well, she's showing this sooper secret mark that tells you and everyone reading something REALLY IMPORTANT.  But I'm now going to tell you, because I don't want to deny you the scentilating last 15 pages of the book where the author scrambles to have a final fight scene, marry everyone off, and explain all the prophesies that were fulfilled in the making of this baby.  Seriously, packed a lot in there at the end, not entirely comfortably.

Anyways, lacking on the sex, but not a bad story.  Although, from a feminist perspective, Angelica was screwed until she got screwed by sooooper old vampire uber alpha male.  No way she was going to save herself or enjoy life without a man.  Just not an option.  Some of the plot devices were really transparent.  Like, "I see what you did there, Hepsen."  Get this, Mina Hepsen is a pen name.  The author's real name is Hande Zapsu from Turkey. Personally, I don't see how Mina Hepsen is really all that much better than Hande Zapsu.  Zapsu is kind of an awesome last name.  Zap.  Zapsu.

Righto. That's that about that.  I've got a couple more PR books from the library.  It's going to get magical in here.  Enjoy your week, Okra-Gs.