New Vamp, Needs a Job

source: http://books.google.com/

Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs
Publisher: Pocket Star
Author: Molly Harper

If I pick up a book and it doesn't grab me right away, I will download the electronic version from my library's website and load it onto my cell phone. Books on my cell phone help me pass the time away at the service centers, doctors' office, restaurants, and other times when I am without my knitting to keep me busy.

You know those times, when I find myself uttering "I can't get this hour of my life back."

Usually, it takes a few weeks to get through a book in this format.
First, I have the excitement for reading a new book and then the let down when I realize that I have read this character type already. This story gave me that "I have read this before" feeling initially.
I did have to pick the book up a few times to get through it after my initial disappointment...

What happens when a children's librarian becomes one of the blood thirsty undead?

Jane Jameson followed all the goals she created for herself.

1. Complete highschool with high grades from Half Moon Hollow and attend college elsewhere.
2. Put all those brains to work by obtaining master's degree in library science.
3. Demonstrate your skills by organizing a thriving young readers program in your hometown's public library.

What could go wrong?
How about being fired from said job and replaced by the town pyromaniac?
Or getting sloppy drunk at the local bar using your severance gift certificate?
And finally dying in a drive-by shooting from a blind-drunk deer hunter after falling face-first into a ditch?
In that span of time when the dying Jane reflected on her life and its inevitable, undignified death, she is given a chance at un-death by a mysterious stranger.

This is her story

Jane has a slightly caustic sense of humor tempered with Southern hospitality. Like any vampire book reader, I find the sharp-tongued heroine to be literary joy-stealers. They are so prevalent in the genre that I just don't care to know why they are so contrary. While not an original character flaw, in this book I found her taunts, barbs, and sarcasm to be very entertaining. Read it for yourself.
Jane on taking a job at her mother's place of employment:

..Mama took at part-time job at A Stitch in Time, a shop that sold fabric and quilting supplies. In the five years she had worked there, I'd received quilted vests for every birthday and Christmas.

I hope this gives you some idea of what I was dealing with.

I couldn't visit my mother at the shop for more than a few minutes at a time. I had allergic reactions to fabric sizing and old women asking me when I was going to settle down. Working there would be my damnation to whatever circle of hell is dedicated to busybodies and fabric artists. 

The book has many colorful characters. Zeb the male best friend. Gabriel the sexy, mysterious vampire sire. Dick Cheney, Gabriel's foil. Andrea the blood surrogate. Missy the aggressive vampire realtor. The mother she "lives" to disappoint. The father who honored her with the horrible middle name. The sister that pretends she does not exist (even before her death). The grandmother who loves all of her husbands to their horrible deaths. And the ghost of a dead aunt who wears funny slogan t-shirts in her spirit form.
The story follows:

Jane and Gabriel's efforts to forge a relationship beyond that of child and master.

Jane's negotiations with her family regarding the delicate nature of inheritance property when the dearly departed doesn't have the good sense to remain dead.

Jane's complicated efforts of learning the intricacies of the vampire community while being accused of vampire murder and debauchery.

Good for Jane that she is a practical new vampire.
For example, when she receives bottled blood from a stranger she checks the safety seal before drinking it.
She is going to be all right.

I did enjoy this little novel by Molly Harper.
It gave me tons to laugh over and an atypical mystery for a vampire romance novel. The author wove a long story with clues just about everywhere.
Once I let go of my expectations for the book, I found a hilarious story I couldn't put down or wait until the sequel.

This of course was difficult for me since I had loaded the book onto my cell phone. I found myself reading it in bed, at red lights, during my lunch hour, and during the short walk to my office from my car.
According to the author's website there are three current books and a fourth book planned.

My score = B-

Horns by Joe Hill - Horny Madness

Horns by Joe Hill
I did not stumble upon Joe Hill.  Amazon and WeReads recommended the author’s novel, Heart Shaped Box.  After about a year of the suggestion popping up in my profile, I finally downloaded the ebook.  I like the first chapter so much that I ordered the audiobook from my local library.
I enjoyed Heart Shaped Box immensely.  The story began innocently as a ghost story and ended as a complicated love story.  I could write that it was a story of revenge and love or a story about redemption and love.  I will not.  It was a creepy story that, had it ended any other way, would have left me scarred for life. 
So, of course, I sought out his most recent novel, Horns. You can find an excerpt here 

One hundred or so pages in, I was so creeped out that I decided to take a break and Google the author. 
Joe Hill is no ordinary creepy author. Hill’s famous father, Stephen King, has been creeping us out for years.  Since I have read no King books, I really did not know what to expect.  I could not use King’s novel based movies as a standard. Why would I?

Armed with the information, I went back to reading my book.

Okay, it has a creepy factor of 9.7 out of ten.  Totally creepy.

The events of the story take place over a week or so but the author filled about 30 or more tracks with flashbacks.



Back to the summary.  There is the whiny guy named Ig Perrish who has lived a righteous life.  His rich family have respectable positions in the community.  His girlfriend’s murder continues to haunt him as the anniversary of her death approaches. Despite having lived a virtuous and respectable  life in the small town of Gideon, everyone thinks he is a rapist/murderer. 
The grieving man visits the site of her death to be near her.  Not to repent anything just get shitfaced and cry.  A few hours later, Ig wakes up from a drunken stupor with a set of horns erupting through skull.  He follows a logical path.

First, he reviews what he can remember; Got drunk, Pissed on a statue of the Virgin Mary, Did not go home…..
Next, he determines that he is not hallucinating. He heads to the apartment that he shares with the local bad girl, Glenna.  Yes, she and other people see the horns. No hallucination, but his problems have just begun.  People start to tell him their deepest, darkest, and disturbing secrets.  He cannot stop them.  He tries but his horns affect a cleansing therapy that everyone wants to experience when they are near the horns.

"You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know."
— Joe Hill (Horns)
 
Then we follow Ig as he seeks out people whom he feels have no dark secrets, he knows all their secrets, or whose secrets would be banal. He visits places all over his little town just to learn that he knew absolutely nothing about the true desires of his family and friends.  It was sad, really.  I kept thinking to myself, he should just stop.  Like bad plastic surgery.

All of his actions seem reasonable.  He even began giving the poor souls advice concerning their deep secrets.  Fist pump.....That is a way to make a bad situation better.

After a  day of this, he slips into a depression and seeks a place to be alone with the horrible confessions and memories of people he loved and respected. That place turns out to be near the murder site.  He is not alone.  He is visited by hundreds of snakes.  Then the pontificating about God, evil, forgiveness, death, and love begins.  His thoughts move the story along with the exhausting flashbacks.

The novel kept me interested although to quote the words of another reviewer: “it meandered a bit.”
At one point, I began to suspect that the author and the editor were lovers.  Hill indulged himself with metaphors and extended flashbacks so much that I said at least once to myself, “enough already.”   I fast forwarded whole minutes of audiobook narration. I laughed after the 50th metaphor or so.  I just wanted some plain writing by the end of the book.   Hill and a thesaurus are a dangerous liaison.

The narrator did not have a lot of distinctive voices for the various characters.  I followed the story by figuring out who was talking.  Despite this, Fred Berman, did an excellent job with his characterization of the Glenna.  He took a minor character and fleshed her out for me.  I began to listen for her appearances in the novel.  I do not know if I would have connected so well with the character if I had read the book. 

Finally, this is not a whodunit novel.  It is not a story about a man turning into a demon.  Not a love story with snakes. Not a tale of unholy revenge in a small town.  It is just good story telling with dashes of spirituality, love, and betrayal.  Or maybe it just a monster tale.  You decide.
My score A- with a dash of creepy.

"The best way to get even with anyone is to put them in the rear view mirror on your way to something better."
— Joe Hill (Horns)

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...

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.

Paging Paranormal Romance

According to Wiki

Paranormal romance is a sub-genre of the romance novel.  Paranormal romance focuses on romance blending fantasy, science fiction, or horror. Paranormal romance may range from traditional category romances with a paranormal setting to stories where the main emphasis is on a science fiction or fantasy based plot with a romantic subplot included. Common hallmarks are romantic relationships between humans and vampires, shapeshifters, ghosts, and other entities of a fantastic or otherworldly nature.
Paranormal romance has its roots in Gothic fiction.

So, when I found a book series about psychics, mediums, clairvoyants, precognitive and telepaths, I thought that I would give it a try.

The author is Kay Hooper and the series, Blood Trilogy, is about a group of psychics that work outside of the law.  

I take it back. The series sucked cabbage. 

Blood Dreams Trailer

Blood Sins Trailer

I do not want to even bother reading the third book... 

The series has the following tags:

๑ suspense

๑ paranormal romance

๑ romantic suspense

๑ psychic mysteries

๑ thriller

All if it LIES

This series is horrible.

I could barely get through the second book.

Wait, I take it back.  The book works as an auidobook because you really do not care what you miss. 

There was not a kiss in either book.  How can you call it a romance if there is no real romance between any two characters?  I could have forgiven the lack of romance had not the thriller portion of the book been equally missing.

No kissing, no thrills.

That is my everyday life......

What about the suspense?  

By the novel's end, I just didn't care.

In Blood Dreams, you have a serial killer torturing women of a certain type.  He murders the daughter of a prominent congressman and appears to stop killing.  The Haven group, psychic civilian crime stoppers who operate outside of any government oversight, are on the case.  A case that leads to a small town in Georgia. 

From Kay Hooper's website

He's the kind of killer we instinctively fear the most. A killer without boundaries, without conscience, without any fear of being caught. And his latest victim is terrifying proof that no one is safe: the daughter of a powerful U.S. senator.

 Has promise doesn't it.  Here let me tell you, the killer was molested by a relative who all of his victims resemble.  Not original but it works.  The killer has some kind of psychic powers that enables him to stalk, claim and hide his victims from our psychics.  That was interesting....

The psychics don't exactly get the clues right. I mean they don't realize that the killer is a psychic that is also stalking the Haven team until the last few chapters of the book.  I knew it well before then.

No one gets kissed or even a just-long-enough hug. The living characters are not really developed.  Certainly not enough for me to care that no one had a real romance in this romantic thriller. They are more like scenery that move the story along.  The ghosts were the most interesting characters.

I assumed that the second book would flesh out some of the characters from the initial book.

Again, I was wrong. 

From the author's site

Young, vulnerable, attractive, Tessa Gray made the perfect victim. Which was why Noah Bishop of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit recruited her to play the role of grieving widow. As the supposed new owner of land coveted by the Church of the Everlasting Sin, she’d be irresistible bait for the reclusive and charismatic Reverend Samuel. His fortified compound in the mountains near Grace, North Carolina had been the last known residence of two women murdered in ways that defied scientific explanation.

The Haven group first met Reverend Samuel during the investigation in Blood Dreams.  In this book, he is suspected of being a psychic vampire.  Now, when I heard that on the audio my ears perked up.

Vampire

Now, this could get interesting. 

We know that vampires are sexy creatures.  Being bitten is likened to being kissed.  In most of the sexy vampire genre, being bitten is orgasmic. 

In this psychic vampire story, the Reverend "bite" also causes orgasms but his victims think they are just getting closer to God.  I laughed out loud.

My favorite line,

" Tessa was shaking her head in response to Hollis's theory about physical pleasure.  Okay, explain the women. Tell me how a woman — a grown, sexually active woman could not know she's having an orgasm. And how any woman could explain that away as a spiritual experience."  —

I am with you Tessa.....

Anyhoo. 

I seriously can't take any more text to describe this stupid series except to write that Hooper would have done better to combine the two books into one novel.  Or taken more time to develop the characters, the romance, and the suspense. 

I recommend the series if you are taking a long car ride by yourself or if you are undergoing physical therapy or some other medical procedure where you are left alone for long periods of time.  You don't want to read this quickly.  It will make you feel like you just ate a lot of angel food cake. With red food coloring. 

    

Savor Me Sexy Killer

“Savor me Slowly” is the fifth installment in the Alien Huntress series by Gena Showalter

The series highlights a female who is hunting bad aliens on post-alien war Earth.  The female can be human, alien, hybrid or cyborg.  That is all I am giving you.  JFGI if you want more information about the series.

In this novel , the hunter is human, alien and animal with a clever chip implanted in her head.  Mishka Le’Ace.  She can communicate with the chip to enhance her assassin skills; in turn the chip keeps her a slave to whoever controls its self-destruct or pain inducing function.  

I want to mention that she has always been controlled by a man. All this leaves her a little whiny and needy in private and a kick ass huntress in public. 

Mishka is a dangerous woman not permitted to explore her emotions.  Expressing any leads to severe punishment.  Yet, the emotions have not been completely removed from personality.  She longs to be treated like a person, to be loved, to be trusted.  Being a spy and an assassin makes relationships impossible to cultivate when she may have to kill or betray her friends and lovers. 

Her current assignment is to gather information about a new alien race attacking women.  Each attack leaves them infected with a zombie virus.

There I wrote it.  When you read the book, you will know that the author is describing a zombie making virus despite never naming it.  The concept of zobmies and zombie making viruses have been in our science-fiction culture long enough so that  authors do not have to explain the phenomena to the reader or create a new name for it.  Geez....

Note to the author:  Just write, "the Schön were infecting beautiful, sexy human women with a zombie virus."  The readers will know EXACTLY what you mean.

The Zombie-strain STD having aliens are called the Schön, and both Alien Investigation and Removal (AIR) and Mishka Le'Ace's boss want them investigated, captured and killed. 

Checkout this excerpt http://genashowalter.com/excerpts/21/savor-me-slowly/

Then there is the assassing,Jaxon. The cool AIR agent who has also been tracking the new aliens.  He has been captured and tortured for information about their habits.  He does not talk.  He will not talk.  The people who capture him admit their failure and hire Marie.  

Jaxon is introduced to our protagonist as Marie, the sexy, new torturer who always gets the information.

Faced with the prospect of enduring more torture from this breathtaking femme fatale he proves his loyalty to AIR and determination to remain silent by telling her

“Come sit on my lap and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

At this point, I did not give a rat’s arse about Mishka.  I wanted more Jaxon.   I did not care if she got him at the end of the book or died trying, I just wanted to know more about the character.

She flirts with her captive, her intended victim

“You won’t even give me a tiny little hint?” she beseeched, her long lashes fluttering, beckoning him deeper into the black sea of her gaze.  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I was hooked. 

Finally, a silver lining to his ravaged face.  He couldn’t see clearly enough to discern her clothing, which meant, in his mind, she was wearing lingerie.  Black, like her eyes.  With sheer lace.  She had small breasts, but they were soft and pink-tipped. 

Despite his condition, his dick lengthened, thickened, hardened.

I loved it.  This guy is B R O K E N before she arrives, he knows that she is replacing his previous 6 tormentors who liked to work together, and his peen still has enough energy to respond to her.

I wanted to date this guy. 

We soon learn that Marie is Mishka undercover. 

I read some more text.  These two are completely and immediately attracted to each other. So much so, that they each constantly think of each other when apart.  To the point of daydreaming.  

What self-respecting alien assassin daydreams on the job? I really found it difficult to ignore this plot device to explain their attraction to the reader. 

Oddly both of these guy do but manage to survive until the major conflicts of the story.

The two try to collaborate in their efforts to repel the Schön from Earth.  

Unfortunately all of his friends at the AIR  hate her by reputation and experience.  It is no Hatfield and McCoys since she has no friends but the hate is real.  

I was a little put off when Jaxon's best friend decides to take a break during a major battle to kill Mishka.  Like who takes a time out during a gunfight with hard to track aliens to kill the new girlfriend? But at least it kept her from daydreaming about her man's sexy body during the scene. 

In conclusion, I have to admit that a man who is willing to shoot his best buds with a flame thrower if they don't accept his woman is sexy as hell.  

If the author can maintain a good balance between alien violence and true-love romance, I will continue to read the series. 

Archangels can kiss me anytime

I must admit it. Paranormal romance is amazing. 
I really love Vampire books.  Blood and sex ~ sounds like a hell of a party.  I am getting into werewolf books. I like pack thinking.   Biting definitely belongs in romance.  Alien saga novels are quaint but not exciting.  But angel books have potentials. 

Archangel's Kiss continues the story of the Guild Hunters saga as its the third story. 
The heroine of Angel's Blood, Elena Devereaux has transmorphed physically.  Her relationship with the archangel, Raphael, will define her continued existence. These major life changes thrust our pale headed hunter into a tricky world of angel politics and culture. 
It is a hell of a tale.

This review will spoil the reader for the Angel's Blood.  the events take place one year after the conclusion of that novel.  I will try to lessen the effect of the spoilers. 

In Angel's Blood, we meet Elena Deveraux who  is hunter born. She can scent vampires. A necessary skill as a guild hunter, a bounty hunter for vampires. In this world, vampires are enslaved to the angels that crossed them over for one hundred years. Many do not like the arrangement. The guild hunters retrieve runaway vamps for their angel masters.
This video should explain everything (if you know German)...

There you go.  A recap of the first book. 

In this book, Elena wakes from a year long coma and must learn to walk, fight, and fly.  Yes, she wakes up as an angel.  And she has to attend angel school with angel children.

I like Elena.  She doesn't make a series of stupid or bad decisions. She isn't so head strong that she ignores the advice of those smarter than herself. Kudos to Nalina Singh, the author for not turning her into a bitch full of "why the fuck did she do that"  moments.  

The author must have a degree in fashion design.  She explains angel couture in ways that made me imagine her wearing the garments as she wrote the book.  As a girl, I paid close attention to footwear descriptions, even when they contained references to knives and blades. 


There are a set number of archangels in this world.  There are always the Cadre of Ten.  At the end of Angel's Blood, the ten has been reduced to nine.  The lesser angels are expecting to position themselves to be raised to archangel status while the Nine consider the sanity of its oldest member, Lijuan.  Lijuan has organized a ball in Elena's honor.  The mystery behind Lijuan's graciousness and her necromantic hobbies means that Elena will need to be strong by the time of the party.  In addition, to the looming party, there is the inevitable power plays by the lesser angels who see Elena as Raphael's Achilles heel.  They strike out against her as she prepares her body and mind to live amongst angels. 

Singh doesn't lay out good and evil for the reader. Good and evil are related to history and nostalgia.  Ignore it.  Think morality and ethics.  Imagine the morality of a 2000 year old angel and a 50 year old angel.  Power gains with age while the angels ability to empathize with humans lessens.
In the relationship between Elana and Raphael, her archangel lover, the age differences is more than 2500 years.  He is a powerful archangel, she is a fledgling angel who can barely fly.  I loved where this went.  Singh wrote her as a warrior not some pretty pale haired angel.  She didn't not take anything away form Elena in this book.

This is how the story begins.
In angel culture, the two angels would relate as fledgling to headmaster. The other angels refer to Elena as Raphael's pet.  In human culture, they would be man and woman.  Perhaps, soulmates.  Can Elena wrap her head around these Alpha and submissive roles? Can Raphael accommodate her need to be loved as an equal? And where is she going to keep her weapons hidden in her wing modified clothing? 

Singh loves her readers because she spends time with the couple as they develop their relationship.

In addition to the Cadre of Ten, to which Raphael belongs, he has his own group of Seven warriors whom he trusts with his life.   We met the blue winged angel, Illium in the previous book.  Singh, has a weakness for a man's eyelashes.  She projected that weakness onto Illium. He must have the sexiest eyelashes in literary history.  The other six members of his Seven make an appearance in this book.  The Seven include both sexy vampires and sexier angels.  Yummy.   I am hoping there will be more exploration of the Seven in succeeding books. 

I can't end this review without admitting the following.  I was anxious to read some high flying angel sex scenes.  You can look for them yourself.  I am not telling anything.


You can find an excerpt here but be careful, this is the second book of the series.

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.”