Monthly Archives: December 2012

Book Review of Robyn Bachar’s Blood, Smoke and Mirrors & Bewitched, Blooded and Bewildered

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I grabbed Blood, Smoke and Mirrors and  book off of the Amazon KDP free list because I really liked the cover. I know. That’s a poor reason to pick up a book, but it works for me.

Description from Goodreads:
Even a bad witch deserves a second chance.

Wrongly accused of using her magic to harm, the closest Catherine Baker comes to helping others is serving their coffee. Life as an outcast is nothing new, thanks to her father’s reputation, but the injustice stings. Especially since the man she loved turned her in.

Now the man has the gall to show up and suggest she become the next Titania? She’d rather wipe that charming grin off his face with a pot of hot java to the groin.

Alexander Duquesne has never faltered in his duties as a guardian—until now. The lingering guilt over Cat’s exile and the recent death of his best friend have shaken his dedication. With the murder of the old Titania, the faerie realm teeters on the brink of chaos. His new orders: keep Cat alive at all costs.

Hunted by a powerful stranger intent on drawing her into an evil web, Cat reluctantly accepts Lex’s protection and the resurrected desire that comes along with it. Lex faces the fight of his life to keep her safe…and win her back. If they both survive.

Somewhat spoilerish review:

Blood, Smoke and Mirrors wasn’t what I expected. To be fair it was exactly what the description said it would be, but somehow I expected a completely different feel than it had. I think it was more fairytale than PNR, despite the vamps and werewolves. But different than expected isn’t necessarily all bad. I enjoyed it. Cat is a likeable heroine, though the ever present cigarette annoyed me…a lot. I get that it gave her a personality quirk, but I didn’t enjoy it. It bothered me in the same way that smelling smoke irks the nonsmokers in a restaurant. I wanted to waft it away. Lex, or Alexander Duquesne (how do you pronounce that?) was smexy, yum. Though I felt like he was missing for half the book, giving Zach room to grow on the reader. I felt disloyal rooting for him since Cat was obviously going to be with her soul mate, Lex, in the end and not Zach. Honestly, I bought book two almost solely to see what happens to/with Zach. I want him to have a happy ending. The fairy siblings were a hoot (poor Tybalt) and though Mac faded out about half way through the book I liked him too.

The book did feel a little bit lopsided. Cat overcame one major challenge only to step right into a second one, either of which could have been expanded to a full book. What’s more, there didn’t seem to be enough importance attached to the first one. I mean come on, that was her father! But he might as well have been a stranger for all the difference it made to her. The second dilemma was of lesser overall significance, but given more attention than the first. I was still left with questions though. What was Zach’s intended purpose in holding her hostage for a month? Was something happening outside of Harrison Tower that he wanted to keep her distracted from? Was he planning to fall in love with her from the beginning? I doubt it. Did her really expect to convince her to be part of his plans?  What was the point? I get what the outcome was, but that is only relevant after the fact.

All-in-all, despite being written in first person present tense (which almost always drives me up the wall) I enjoyed the read. It was fun, didn’t take itself too seriously and passed the hours easily. I’m off to start Bewitched, Blooded and Bewildered now.

bewitched, blooded and bewilderedDescription from Goodreads:
One thing stands between Catherine Duquesne and happily-ever-after with her soul mate Lex her unwanted bond with billionaire vampire Zachary Harrison. Married life is hard enough without adding an uninvited vampire to the mix, and being tied to Zach endangers more than just her relationship. If Zach dies, she dies, and with his new seat on the necromancer council being challenged by older, more powerful masters, his life expectancy is dwindling fast.

Vampire politics is only the beginning of Cat s problems. Hunters are stalking magicians, abducting entire families and killing anyone who resists. As the current Titania and Oberon, Cat and Lex must protect their people, but Cat s dark past keeps the victims from seeking their help. Worse, the former Titania s granddaughter wants to oust Cat from the job, believing her vampire ties make her unfit.

To break the bond Cat must broker deals with devils on a journey that will take her to hell and back literally. Freedom comes at a high price, but Cat will risk anything to save her people and her marriage.

Review:

If anything I think that Bewitched, Blooded and Bewildered is even better than Blood, Smoke and Mirrors. Cat really comes into her own in this one, no more Mrs. Nice Witch. She fully accepts herself as a bad witch and runs with it. She has the mouth of a sailor and a seriously rapier wit. I only wish I could be half as sharp in real life. I laughed out loud more than once, especially at some of the modern media references (fighting Louis, turning into Darth Vader, Bruce Wayne and Batman)…all very funny. The book also felt more focused than the last, leaving fewer questions at the end. I still feel sorry for poor Zach, but am looking forward to seeing what happens to Portia and Faust. Honestly, I probably would have the book it five stars if it hadn’t ended so abruptly. I didn’t see it coming at all. At 92% (on the Kindle) it suddenly ended. It was so unexpected that I was literally startled when the “more books by Robyn Bachar” screen came up instead of the start of the next chapter. This left me feeling like it was unfinished. Of course, in a sense it isn’t since it is part of a series. But it feels very much like a just read the first 10 or so chapters of a larger book than an entire story. A challenge was overcome, as opposed to the challenge (if that makes any sense.) Either way I’ll be reading the next one.

 

Comment on H. P. Mallory’s Dulcie O’Neil novels

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It probably would have been better to do this last month for Halloween, but I grabbed H. P. Mallory’s, To Kill A Warlock (Dulcie O’Neil, #1)  off of the Amazon KDP list. I enjoyed it, so I went ahead and bought books 2, 3, and 4. (I borrowed book 5). 

These books focus on Dulcie O’Neil. Goodreads describes the series like this: Dulcie O’Neil is a fairy. And not the type to frolic in gardens. She’s a Regulator — a law enforcement agent who monitors the creatures of the netherworld to keep them from wreaking havoc in the mortal world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Individually each of these books is all alright. Mallory has an easy, comfortable writing style that allows the reader to coast along unhindered. It is much like your best friend is telling you a story over a tall glass of some from-frou alcoholic beverage. There are some interesting characters, a couple steamy sex scenes, and a lot of sexual tension. Taken as a whole, however, I was underwhelmed with the series. 

To Kill A Warlock introduces Dulcie and her friends/coworkers, who share the limelight. However, as the series progresses each book focuses more and more tightly on just Dulcie, which I think is too bad. I know she is the main character, but she isn’t the centre of the world(s). She is like Netherworld crack apparently. All beings lust after her. She almost gets raped more times than I could count. The leaders of The Resistance listen to, and even seem to take orders from her, as soon as she makes herself known. (Guess there isn’t a need for her to prove herself in any manner.) She is the daughter of someone important, the best at her job, etc. The books just seem to spiral closer and closer to her and therefore allow for less and less development of the other characters. Though I did love a few of them. Bram is AWESOME and I really wanted him to find some happiness for himself. He was my favourite character by far. Knight is darned sexy all the way around. Quill keeps you guessing. Dia is a hoot and Sam is Dulcie’s Samwise Gamgee. You can’t help but like her. 

The books do seem to be getting shorter with each new one and ending on sharper and sharper cliffhangers. Book four was especially abrupt. It ended on a such a dun-dun-dun moment that I was almost afraid to even start book five. It is the last one currently available and I didn’t want to commit to another book only to get to the end and find that the pattern of the story not ending on the last page continued (which it does). Toward the end I started to feel like these weren’t even complete books. One bled too easily from one to the other and to be honest I would have preferred it if they weren’t so broken up. Each book recaps each of the previous ones. So, book one was recapped in book two. Books one and two were recapped in book three. Books one, two, and three were covered in book four. You get the point. It got really repetitive and took up a lot of space in the already short books. If there weren’t so many of them this wouldn’t be necessary and I wouldn’t have had to read the same passages over and over again. And considering book five literally started in the middle of the same conversation that book four ended with (to continue the previous example) it is safe to say the two books read as one. 

(I don’t know if it is coincidence, but I seem to be seeing this happen a lot lately. I have to wonder if the spread of the cheap ebook has somehow made it appear OK to create series that are almost closer to extend chapters of the same story instead of actual separate books. -Food for thought)

All-in-all there were aspects of this series that grated on my nerves, mostly because they emerged so often (same phrases used in every book for example). But I wouldn’t have read all five of them if there wasn’t some value to them. The story is an interesting one. You want to know what happens in the end…whenever that might be. There are enough alpha males pumping testosterone into the air to keep a hot blooded female smiling. Mallory lets her imagination run wild on the mystical creature front (though is is also a distraction and could be considered a detraction) and the writing is quirky and fun. I might have enjoyed it more if I had put some time between the books, but that’s just not the way I like to read a series. It’s worth picking up if you have the patience for it though. 

Book Review of Home Lost, by Franz McLaren

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Quite some time ago I requested Home Lost (Clarion of Destiny Volume 1) from Caveab.com to review. (Sorry it took me so long to get to it.)

Description form Goodreads:
In “Home Lost”, Volume I of the the eight volume fantasy “Clarion of Destiny”, Leena receives the Garlan branch. From first contact her life is changed. After a solitary journey she returns home to find her village in ruins. Confused and alone Leena sets out to search for her family and to discover the reason that the Garlan branch has selected her.

**somewhat spoilerish**

I’ll be honest. I am completely baffled by this book. It starts off really well with Leena following her destiny and accepting the Garlan branch before returning to her decimated village. After that…

Usually such books have a fairly predictable progression, the hero (or heroine in this case) sets off on a quest, meets people along the way, fights a few henchman, challenges the enemy, wins, and proceeds to whatever version of a happy ending the genre demands. Here, not so much. It stalled out at the sets off on a quest stage. By the time the reader reaches the cliff-hanger ending that people have been praising Leena hadn’t even reached a destination, let alone her destination, hadn’t truly identified her enemy, and if you discount ‘serving wenches’ etc she met four people. She had two run ins with bad guys, none of which seem associated with her quest and not a single actual battle with her new all-powerful Garlan branch. She used it a time or two, but never had to fight with it or even cared to explore its power. To complicate matters Darius (one of the four people) spent about twenty percent of the book recounting a story that didn’t seem to have anything to do with Leena or her situation. It might become important in future books, but I saw no reason for it here. The book consists of Leena traveling. Period. End of story, pun intended.

None of this however is the worst part for me. These are:

1. Leena is The Chosen and is supposed to be a strong hero for the people, but from the moment she leaves her village she just follows one male and then another. She unthinkingly, and one presumes appropriately, hands all decision making over to them. Apparently, despite being the hero she can’t be trusted to decide which direction to travel in or even when to stop and eat and she never tries.

2. Darius’ story: I don’t want to give it away, but he tells a tale (in which he is by far the brightest of the bunch) about a group of greedy merchants encountering a much less advanced civilisation and practically destroying it. He then saves the day, but in so doing decides to help them by providing them with what they lack socially so that they are closer to the level of his own society. This however, is just a well intentioned version of exactly what the merchants did. They imposed their own culture onto another and declared it an improvement, even while acknowledging that not everyone in the society appreciated the change and there were negative effects. The whole thing stunk of arrogance and ethnocentrism. I’m really not into that.

The book isn’t without highlights. It is well written. I especially appreciated the prologue and the fact that McLaren was willing to allow his characters to fall to their absolute bottom before providing them with any sort of reprieve. There isn’t always a happy ending in life, and even when there is there isn’t always an easy road to it available. It and chapter one make me think that if I was willing to read the whole series and then consider the story as a condensed whole I would find a jewel, but I think it would just take too long. People like this book. I’m not trying to say you won’t, but it didn’t really do too much for me.