late lightning

Well well, another week has gone by and it looks like I am way behind on blogging. My parents arrived on Monday night and will be here until right before New Years. I have been rather busy shuttling them around town to go shopping and whatnot. So far, so good. I realize that I owe some more "lightning" reviews from last weekend's housesitting gig. The more I try to write these short things, the more I realize that I'm kind of verbose and not very good at condensing ideas into readable short bites. So forgive me if these are more thundering than lightning.

I started with Julia London’s The Perils of Pursuing a Prince. In this novel our intrepid heroine Greer Fairchild has ventured into the wilds of Wales to track down a long-lost relation who may be the key to her inheritance. Although she had begun the journey as the companion to an elderly woman, they had been joined by a very accommodating young man who ingratiates himself to the point that he convinces Greer to keep traveling with him even after her elderly companion passes away. So from the beginning I am thinking, ok, this girl is not the sharpest stick in the shed. Then we meet the putative prince of the title. He is something of a hermit on his land in Wales. Mr. Owen (the aforementioned young man) has a grudge with Rhodrick Glendower, Earl of Radnor and “Prince of Powys, based on a long history between the two. Ms. Fairchild ends up caught in the middle, but I kept wishing that she would be just a little more astute about the obviously nefarious Mr. Owen. Once he fled the coop and left her in the somewhat gothic tender care of the Prince, things did get more interesting. I vacillated between being entertained by the battle of the wills between Rhodrick and Greer, boredom that it was taking them so long to do something about their obvious attraction and frustration at Greer for her apparent insistence on being a stubborn eejit. I did like Rhodrick as a character. He was prickly and rude and adorably self-conscious about his less-than-handsome looks. Greer on the other hand is something of a whiny needy chit who can't see past the nose on her face. I was never quite sure what an intelligent man like Rhodrick saw in her. Oh well. There are worse ways to spend a few hours, and I do like Wales as a setting. C+

Dark Seduction by Brenda Joyce
I almost did not finish this book. As it was it gave me constant fits of laughter and snorts of “omg, I can’t believe I just read that!” Let’s just start with the accents. DROVE ME BATTY! And I like a Scottish accent if it’s done well. By the end of this book, I was walking around the house saying things like “I be hungry. Where be food?” What are they, pirates? I be tired of this talk. Then to make matters worse, the author has the audacity to name the heroine of a time-traveling story set in Scotland, Claire. Hello? Has no one heard of the book Outlander? Beyond that, the story just didn’t work for me on most levels. Our hero brings Claire back to his time and immediately upon arrival, does not even wait for her to recover from the aftereffects of the time-travel, but just hoists her up and mounts her. Woot! Hot sexxoring and we’re only into chapter 2! Hmph. I like hot stuff as much as the next girl, but this just struck me as unbelievable and not even real heroic. Oh, you wanted to know about the plot? Hmm, ok, let me try to sum it up. Our hero is a newly turned Master of Time. Which means, among other things that he has the ability to time travel, that his mother was a goddess (no really, a GODDESS!), and that he can do the nasty without ever tiring. Apparently, these masters of time have some masterful bits, if you know what I mean. What else? Oh yeah, there be evil. EEEEVIL. As in the fruits of the devilll…. *rolleyes* Um, anyways, there is some more stuff about the devil incarnate and a battle for the soul of our hero in which he has to try NOT to have sex with the heroine. Anyways, as you can tell, this book just didn’t cut it for me. Nice cover tho, I will give you that. D+

I’ve heard of Marjorie M. Liu for quite some time, but Shadow Touch is the first book of hers that I’ve read. It won’t be the last. This was well-written, imaginative and suspenseful. I assume that there is a lot more to the story of the Dirk and Steele detective agency, but I found that I could follow this story as a stand-alone pretty well. Artur Loginov has a gift. He can sense the emotions and thoughts of people from the objects they've touched. While that may sound kind of nifty, it can also be a terrible curse as it's not like he has a choice as to what kinds of thoughts and emotions he picks up. He's learned to protect his skin and his emotions with protective layers. Elena Baxter has the gift of healing. She's never gone to med school but volunteers at a hospital where she quietly heals the sick. One day, both of these extraordinary individuals are kidnapped and imprisoned in a hellish experimental facility that reminded me of something out of the X-men. Through circumstance, they meet and establish an amazing psychic and emotional connection, due to the combination of their unique extrasensory abilities. Even though they spend a good deal of the middle of the book physically apart, the link established between their minds permits them to communicate and continue to develop a growing relationship. One thing that I really appreciated about this story was how both of them had to rely upon the other. I never felt that either one was clearly dominant or superior to the other. Their gifts complimented each other and they felt like a true team. My only complaint, such as it is, would be that I like my romances to be a little spicier and there was a distinct lack of love scenes between the h/h. Of course, given the fact that they're locked up in a facility for half of the book and then on the lam for the other half, that's not a total surprise, but still. I'm shallow that way. *g* However, that's just a minor complaint. Overall, I was really impressed with Ms. Liu's skill as a writer and world-building abilities. I'm definitely going to look for more books in this series. B+

Ice Blue by Anne Stuart

I have a confession to make. I don't really read contemporary or romantic suspense. Yes, I said it. I've never touched Linda Howard and I rarely read la Nora; I wouldn't know a Brockman SEAL from the kind that flops around in the water. For some odd reason, I tend to stick to my historicals. But I do have a soft spot in my heart for Anne Stuart. I picked up one of her books while in Africa (you may get sick of hearing this, but it was a great way to introduce me to authors I might not have otherwise read). It was called Moonlight and the combination of suspense, sexual tension, dangerous bad-boy hero and on-the-run plot managed to really get my attention. I made a mental note to check out more by this author when I made it back to the States, the land of endless books.

Funny thing is, I've read Stuart books since Moonlight and as of yet, none of them have quite measured up to that initial experience. I'm not sure if it's them or me. In any event, I am sad to say that the trend holds true for Ice Blue.

I was jazzed to find that the hero of the book was not Caucasian, or at least not totally white. Takashi O'Brien by name, he's half-Japanese, and all lethal weapon. Like all Stuart heros, he is silent, taciturn and deadly and knows that he "ought" to be fulfilling his mission and taking care of the heroine (in a permanent manner) but for some odd reason, he just can't go through with it. Hmm, where have I read this before?

Summer Hawthorne is a museum curator who owns an old Japanese ceramic dish that some psycho cult leader really wants. Really, really wants. So much so that he's willing to have her off'ed in order to get it. Takashi saves her from one off'ing attempt and then we're off on the run. Will he kill her himself and thus keep the secret location of the ceramic dish safe for all eternity? Or will he be unable to resist her spunky innocence and surrender to the inevitable? Most importantly, will they save the world from apocalyptic doom as meted out by the psycho cult leader?

Well of course, I cannot tell because that would constitute spoilers. *cough cough* But I think you might be able to guess.

I dunno. I'm starting to think that maybe I really am not cut out for romantic suspense. Because this probably was a good book. I just felt, so....bored. And that's too bad because I wanted to like it. Dammit, I really wanted to fall for the half-Asian hero because Lord knows, we get so few of them. Oh well. Better luck next time. I give this one a C, although it gets an A in the cover art department.

Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Ok, well since I cannot concentrate on my accounting homework to save my life, I might as well take a study break and talk about the book that I finished this morning. Yes, I know I said I finished Mine Till Midnight this morning, and I did. That happened in the early morning. This was the book I had started and put down so that I could read MTM and then subsequently picked back up and finished. K, so that said, how was it?

Mphm, to copy a Jamie-ism. And I'm not even sure if that is a good noise or bad noise. Let's just say that it was my first Kenyon, and while I don't think it will be my last, I was not bowled over. Again, the short plot is basically that there is this Greek (no, make that Spartan) love slave named Julian who is trapped in this book and unleashed by a modern woman named Grace who lives in New Orleans and is a virgin (practically anyways) sex therapist. Uh huh. Well, the sex slave thing has promise, but then they go through the entire book without having sex. whaaa? To be fair, the author throws in some sort of supernatural curse reversal to explain the no-sex storyline. Something about Julian not having sex for the month and then having a lot of it right at the end means that he will be free of his curse...but honestly, that felt just a tad manipulative. Toss in a wacky tarot card reading sidekick friend and it all adds up to a whole lotta cliches.

That said, there were things about the book that worked for me. I liked Julian. Although he was pretty angsty and emotive, he was also funny and thoughtful and sweet. I could understand how he would find it attractive for a woman to see him as something other than a piece of meat. As for Grace, she was a lot harder for me to get behind. Yes, I understand that she was treated like crap by her first boyfriend, but is she really going to be a frigid ice-queen for the rest of eternity? I mean, really. I don't buy the whole my-heart-was-broken-and-therefore-I-shall-remain-in-solitary-misery-for-the-rest-of-my-life thang. Yeah, you go girl, that'll really show 'em!

Greek gods and goddesses pop in and out of the story and throw around phrases like "he's going to kick your ass!" which I'm pretty sure I don't remember reading in Plato. But by this point, I had started to look at the whole thing like an episode of Hercules or Xena. And that is probably what actually saved the book for me. Once I started reading it as a light-hearted comedy based in fantasy, it became more entertaining. So overall, my final grade for this book comes out to a solid C. I still think I am going to check out the Dark Hunter books just 'cuz. Hopefully they're a little lighter on the comedy and heavier on the "dark" aspect.