Month: March 2012

Flash Gold

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Flash Gold by Lindsay Buroker is the first story in her Flash Gold Chronicles. What are those, I hear you asking? They are an absolutely marvelous series of western-style steampunk-flavored romps set in a gold rush-era Yukon featuring a terrifically inventive heroine, Kali McAlister.

In other words, it’s fun!

Kali McAllister plans to enter her “dogless sled” in a mushing race, all so she can win the $1000 prize and leave the Yukon in general and the town of Moose Hollow in particular, forever.

Kali is an inventor. Her dogless sled runs on steampower and mechanical engineering trickery. Most of the folks around Moose Hollow believe she’s a witch. They’re wrong.

Kali’s mother was a witch. Well, a pretty powerful medicine woman of the local Han tribe, anyway. And her father, well, he was the closest thing to a wizard that this world is likely to see for a while.

And he invented “flash gold”. Gold flakes that go “BOOM” like gunpowder or TNT, only more stable, and way more valuable.  The really neat thing about flash gold is that it obeys instructions like the punch cards on a jacquard loom, but way easier. Flash gold accepts verbal instructions.

The world’s last known supply of was her father’s legacy to Kali. But Kali’s trying to keep that fact very, very quiet. She has enough problems with the idiots in town who want to sabotage her sled.

So when a big, sword-toting stranger comes to town and wants to hire on as her guard for the race, Kali is pretty skeptical. But she needs a guard. It’s just that this man who calls himself “Cedar” is too expensively equipped for someone willing to work for just the promise of wages.

And that’s when Kali discovers that  every nefarious no-good varmint in the Yukon and Northwest Territories seems to be hunting her for her father’s flash gold. And that Cedar is hunting all of them!

Escape Rating A-: I read this twice. I requested a review copy from the author, and read and really enjoyed it. But I didn’t get the review written. The third book in the Flash Gold Chronicles just came out (Hunted is #2, and Peacemaker is #3) and I decided it was time to write the review. I roared through Flash Gold again, and it was just as much fun the second time through.

A reader can’t ask for better than that!

Blue Monday

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

“Blue Monday”, according to some very shaky pseudoscience, is the most depressing day of the year.

Which makes Blue Monday a fitting title for the first book in Nicci French’s new mystery series. Psychotherapist Frieda Klein features as the reader’s guide into the darker recesses into the human mind.

Frieda’s first “case” delves into dark places, indeed. Because this mystery is a case about lost people. Not just the initial tragedy of a missing child that opens the story, but all of the characters in this multi-act tragedy have lost essential pieces of themselves.

Including the psychotherapists who are supposed to guide their patients out of the depths. And the deeper this case goes, the murkier it gets. But it is enthralling until long after the last page is turned.

It all starts with a lost child. Twenty years ago, Joanna Vine disappeared on her way home from school. Her sister Rose lost track of her for just a couple of minutes, and little Jo vanished. Joanna was five years old. Rose Vine was only nine.

Joanna was never found. Not the child, not her body. Rose never stopped blaming herself for that one moment of childish selfishness.

The Vine’s marriage didn’t survive the tragedy. Richard Vine drank too much. Deborah Vine remarried and tried to move on.

Then a little boy disappeared, under almost identical circumstances, over twenty years later. But serial criminals don’t usually wait that long. Two doesn’t make a serial anything. But there is no other child snatching like these two, not in the long intervening years.

And psychotherapist Frieda Klein has a new patient. A patient who came to her before the boy, Matthew Faraday, was kidnapped. Frieda’s new patient described seeing a little boy just like Matthew waiting for him and imagined a little boy just like Matthew being his son.

Is Frieda’s patient, Alan Dekker, the kidnapper? This time? He’s not Joanna’s snatcher since he was a child then himself. But does he know something?

Frieda’s investigation into Alan Dekker’s lost boy unearths the lost, lonely, abandoned child that Alan Dekker used to be. A child who never knew Joanna Vine then, and doesn’t know anything about Matthew Faraday now.

But Alan’s lost history is the key to everything. If it doesn’t destroy him first.

Escape Rating A: This is a psychological thriller, and it is excellent. It also has one of those endings that twists at the very, very last second in a very neat and creepy/spine-tingling way.

The characters in this drama are fascinating. The story starts out as a tragedy with the lost child. But every single person has lost something important. There is a major theme about the loss of identity, and about adult children with major pieces of their identities missing. But even the supposedly “whole” people have major gaps in their lives and are patching over them as part of the story.

If you enjoy psychological thrillers with darker edges, read this one on a sunny day!

 

 

Heart of Perdition

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Heart of Perdition by Selah March is a short, chilling gothic story. And I do mean chilling. The ending was very eerie, and I got the shivers. Not from cold, but from the creepy-crawlies. In a good way.

Heart of Perdition takes place in a steampunk-style world, but the story isn’t steampunk, and that doesn’t matter. Steampunk can be a setting, just as an alien planet or near-future apocalypse can be a setting, while the story is another genre entirely. That’s how we sometimes get genre-benders like futuristic romance or historical mysteries.

So the steampunk setting of Perdition allows the use of airships and clockwork servants, but doesn’t drive the story. What drives the story is an ancient evil creature named Xaphan, and a terrible curse embodied by one lonely young woman.

Elspeth Shaw lives alone on the Greek island of St. Kilda. It’s a very bleak island, and it’s better that way. Elspeth suffers from a terrible curse. Every living creature who becomes emotionally attached to her, dies. Every creature, not just humans. Elspeth can’t even have a pet without watching it die horribly of her curse.

Elspeth only allows herself one human servant, a housekeeper whom she pays well and treats just barely tolerably, guaranteeing that the woman never forms any attachment to her. It’s her only way of keeping the woman alive. All of her other servants are automata.

Poor Elspeth’s own feelings don’t enter into the curse, she can love anyone she likes. Or not. What matters what they feel about her.

The curse is the result of an evil bargain her father made the night she was born. Her father tried to cheat death. To do so, he stole a powerful artifact that had been safeguarded by a church. That artifact controlled an evil spirit named Xaphan. The bargain her father made was that the curse would be visited on his first-born child. Elspeth’s father assumed his first-born would be a son. He was an egotistical scientist in the Victorian era, he was like that. Instead, his firstborn was Elspeth.

Her father was not killed by the curse because he never loved her. He lived a normal life-span.

But as he died, an old bitter man, he decided upon one last act of horror. Dr. Shaw died in the house of James Weston, Earl of Falmouth. Weston was a young man dying of congenital heart disease. Contemporary physicians could recognize it, but not cure it.

With his dying breath, Dr. Shaw directed Weston to go to Elspeth, and to release Xaphan. Knowing the evil would grant the dying young man his wish of restored life, at the cost of releasing that terrible evil back into the world.

The inevitable result is tragic and horrible and incredibly chilling.

Escape Rating B+: I recommend Heart of Perdition if you like your romances with a side of eerie. You will gobble this story right up–but don’t gobble this one up alone in the dark with your ereader. The ending haunts.

Wrong Side of Hell

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Wrong Side of Hell by Juliana Stone is a teaser novella for her new League of Guardians series. If you are one of the readers who is duly teased by this link between Stone’s Jaguar Warrior series and this one, don’t worry, you won’t have a long wait. The first League book, Wicked Road to Hell, will be released on April 24.

I was definitely teased. This was a terrific introduction to a new series!

Logan Winters is one of the baddest of all “bad boys”. He’s a hellhound. His job on Earth is to pick up souls marked for damnation, and escort them to their proper place in Hell. If Logan is sent to get you, you’ve earned yourself a spot in District 3. This means you were a very, very wicked person during your life.

Nothing about contract signing or selling yourself to the Devil. That’s not Logan’s end of the business. He handles pickup and delivery. If there is someone handling “sales”, we don’t see that part of the process. And this doesn’t seem like that kind of worldbuilding.

The person we do see is Askelon, except he’d rather be called “Bill”. He cloaks himself in glamour to appear as a short, round middle-aged man, but “Bill” is really one of the most powerful beings in any of the dimensions. And “Bill” bats for the opposite team from Logan’s. I don’t mean sexually, I mean metaphysically.

Logan is a hellhound. Askelon is a being of the heavenly dimension. And one pretty high in the hierarchy at that. Seraphim generally are.

Askelon blackmails Logan into doing him a very, very big favor. Which doesn’t sound all that angelic. He demands that Logan go into purgatory and rescue the soul of a young woman that Logan already returned once from death.

The first time Logan rescued Kira Dove, he spent millenia in The Pit for his crime. (Time passes differently in the infernal dimensions). And he did it because Askelon blackmailed him then, too. Also because the Seraphim convinced him it was the right thing to do.

The same thing is happening again. Neither heaven nor hell should be interfering in one human’s life this much. The Seraphim is convinced that too many fates depend on this one young woman’s survival, and not just human fates either.

Logan tries to convince himself that none of that matters to him. He owes the Seraphim, so he’ll take care of what he has to. But he still remembers that girl, after all those centuries in The Pit.

The difference is, Kira Dove is a woman now. When Logan Winters saved her the first time, she believed in him. She continued to believe in him, and everything she saw when she died that first time and Logan brought her back.

Even though everyone said she was crazy. And committed her for it. Experimented on her. Abused her. She still believed in what she saw, who she saw.

Kira Dove was dead again, but all she knew for certain was that everything she remembered was true. And Logan came to rescue her. Again. But this time, she could fight beside him.

But would he let her?

Escape Rating B+: As an introduction to a new series, this story really whetted my appetite for the first full-length novel. This particular story, although it seems like it resolved to an HEA, also feels like it sets up the series as a whole. I think there are a lot of trials and tribulations ahead for Kira and Logan, even as the focus of the series moves to other members of the League.

Kira reminds me a little of Sarah Connor from Terminator 2, at the beginning when Sarah is in the State Hospital. She has that vibe of “I know I’m not crazy and I have to keep myself strong for the day I’ll need to fight my way out”, but with a hint of vulnerability that Sarah didn’t have or need.

This is intended as a bridge story between Stone’s Jaguar Shifters series and this new series, as Logan appeared as a side-character in the earlier series. But if there are details that I missed, they didn’t hamper my overall enjoyment of the story.

 

Donovan’s Bed

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Donovan’s Bed by Debra Mullins turned out to be the best kind of surprise. All I expected was to get my curiosity sated about Samhain’s Retro Romances. What I discovered was a guilty pleasure of a book.

Sarah Calhoun made one mistake, and the small-minded small-town gossips are never going to let her forget. Admittedly, it was a pretty big mistake. And the entire town knows that Sarah isn’t going to go to her marriage bed (if any man is ever willing to overlook her past, that is) a blushing virgin.

So Sarah has spent the last two years living down her terrible sin, and throwing herself into running her father’s newspaper. The newspaper is all she has left of him. Being a good businesswoman, instead of just a woman, barely keeps the busybodies out of her life.

But of course there is a man. His name is Jack Donovan. She’s been pursuing him as part of her work. He’s new in town, and he’s bought the biggest ranch for miles around. But…no one knows who he is or where he came from. Donovan just showed up in Burr one day with a fistful of cash and bought himself a lot of respectability. Sarah knows he must have a dark secret buried someplace deep.

Jack Donovan does have a secret, and he doesn’t want Sarah to find it. So whenever she tries to interview him, he tries to get her temper riled up. Not true anger, just to deflect her a little. And because the sexual tension between them makes the sparks fly.

But when Donovan has an ornate four-poster bed shipped to Burr from “Back East”, all the mock-flirtation comes to a boil. Sarah wants to know why a single rancher, however wealthy, lavished so much money on such an ostentatious piece of furniture.

Donovan tell her that he’s decided to settle down and find a wife. Then has the gall to tell Sarah that she isn’t on the list. Even worse, he tells that she’d be just fine for a passionate affair, but that she’s not a woman to marry.

Not having lost his entire mind, he doesn’t tell her that the reason he won’t consider marrying her is that he wants a full-time rancher’s wife, and he knows she won’t give up her newspaper. And that it is unfair of him to expect it of her. And there’s that other little problem–he won’t tell her his secrets, and she won’t rest until she finds out.

But Sarah is incensed. Telling a newspaperwoman that she isn’t good enough to marry you is not the way for a man to lead a quiet and respectable life in a small town. Sarah prints Donovan’s wife hunt as front page news the very next day, complete with his stated list of qualifications.

The poor man finds himself besieged, even in his own home!

But the more women who throw themselves at him, the more he realizes that Sarah, the one he believed was totally unsuitable, is the only woman he could possibly spend the rest of his life with.

But first they have to deal with a few pesky little problems. Like his past. And her past. And whether or not they are both willing to make serious compromises in their expectations.

Sarah was right all along. Jack Donovan  really did have a deep, dark secret buried in his past. Jack wanted it to stay buried forever. Until his worst self turns out to be the only one who can save Sarah’s life.

Escape Rating B+: If you have a fondness for Western romances in small frontier towns, this is a good one. I’d forgotten how much fun these stories are. It probably helps a lot that this particular “Retro Romance” isn’t all that retro–Donovan’s Bed was originally published in 2000.

I’m even considering reading the rest of the Calhoun Sisters series, just for fun.

Do not judge this book by its cover. Donovan is probably even more alpha than the picture, but Sarah is making her way as a businesswoman in a man’s world, she’s no sweet, submissive little miss. The original paperback cover may be more lurid, but more accurate.

 

Ebook Review Central, Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books, Riptide Publishing, January 2012

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Ebook Review Central> ebooks in libraries

And another month ends here at Ebook Review Central. As I searched for reviews for the January titles from Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books, and Riptide Publishing, I had a few moments where I feared that January was going to be going out with more of a whimper than a bang.

No wait, it’s March that does the in like a lion, out like a lamb thing.

The issue is that I have good news, and I very nearly had bad news.

The good news was that this list came closer than ever to 100% of the titles getting reviewed. Only two books out of all the lists were missed, and they were from different publishers. This is excellent and is a testament to the hard work that the review coordinators are doing.

On my now infamous other hand, until nearly the end of my search, I was afraid that the reviewers were still sleeping off their holiday excesses well into January. Almost every title received a review, but, and you knew that but was coming, almost every title received just that, a, meaning one, review. Occasionally two.

That doesn’t give me enough to pick a feature on.

Just as I was reaching the end of the lists, the featured books practically jumped out at me.    These three titles not only had more than just one or two reviews, they each had several very enthusiastic reviews!

The other interesting thing about this set of featured titles is that they are all male/male romances. Because this group of publishers has titles all over the romance spectrum, I never know what types of romance will capture reviewers’ attention in any month. This month, it was all m/m romance.

The first two featured titles are both from Amber Quill’s Amber Allure imprint, and from their Hot College Daze series.

The title that generated the most reviewing heat is Tailor Made by Josephine Myles. This is a story about how a good man can make a bad boy change for the better, and not just when it comes to love and sex and sleeping around. College is about growing up, and the two young men in this story start out as complete opposites, but by the end, grow towards each other, in spite of their differences. One reviewer summed it up by saying “this story just left me smiling when I finished it”.

Number two on the hit parade is Lou Harper’s Academic Pursuits. Academic Pursuits is slightly different. It’s told from the first-person perspective, and reads like someone’s diary, or as if someone is telling you a dirty story from their college days. And it’s pretty naughty story about a very charming guy who likes to chase, and seduce, supposedly straight guys. Life is working really well for him in college until someone new starts chasing him. Reviewers mostly found this book amusing, but opinions divided depending on whether or not the reviewer liked the main character.

Riptide Publishing, with only two books in January, still managed to get one into the featured books this month. Rhi Etzweiler’s Blacker than Black ghosted into the number three slot with this paranormal tale of vampires who feed off the life energy of other beings. Black and Jhez are Nightwalkers; they turn tricks in order to bring fresh victims for the vamps, and in return, they get to live. Until one vamp wants them to spy on his own kind. Then the vamps start dying, and all hell breaks loose. Well, looser than it already was.  Energy vampires in an urban fantasy setting. No wonder the reviewers thought this was cool. It just plain sounds cool.

That’s a wrap on another edition of Ebook Review Central. We’ll be back next week with the first February ERC. We’ll see what Carina Press published in February 2012, and what the reviewers had to say about it.

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 3-4-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

I heard something on NPR today about a computer algorithm that can reasonably identify anonymous authors by their choices of words and phrases. Then I thought about how many times I used the phrase “on the one hand…”

On the one hand, March 7-11 is the Book Bloggers and Publishers Online Conference. I have to wonder how many book bloggers are going to be too wrapped up in the conference to post! I’ve heard it’s absolutely awesome and I’m really looking forward to it.

On the other hand, I signed up for NaBloPoMo again over at BlogHer. So I’ve committed to posting something every day again in March. The prompt this month is “Whether”. For the days of the BBPOC, that would be whether or not I spend my whole day glued to the conference I still have to post something. I’m planning to queue up some reviews.

Speaking of queuing up reviews, I’m going to say this now because I absolutely cannot believe it. I read everything from last week’s Nightstand. Well, not quite everything. I’m in the middle of Nicci French’s Blue Monday right now. But this is the closest I’ve ever come to finishing all the books on the stand, ever.

Of course, that doesn’t account for all the previous nightstands, but we have to take our little victories where we can find them. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Let’s talk about next week’s pristine, new nightstand. So empty, so bright and shiny and waiting to be filled.

There is a treat on it. One of my most fun author discoveries was Cindy Spencer Pape. I absolutely adored both her steampunk series Steam and Sorcery and her urban fantasy Urban Arcana series. I’ve been waiting for the next book in her Urban Arcana series and Motor City Mage is finally here. If it is anything like her previous books, this is going to be a “read in one gulp” book. Yummy.

I picked Gentlemen Prefer Nerds by Joan Kilby by the title. I’m a geek girl, and this story of a jewel thief chasing the nerd girl tickled me for it’s concept. The recent trend in romances has been for the nerd to be the guy. But when the description mentioned espionage, I got a whiff of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. I loved that show. I’m a sucker for stories that use that trope.

Katee Robert’s science fiction romance Queen of Swords has been perplexing me just a bit. Goodreads lists it as book 2 of her new Sanctify series, with The High Priestess, the prequel novella as book 1. The only problem for this compulsive completist is that The High Priestess doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. ARGH!

As a complete change of pace, I have The Book of Lost Fragrances by M.J. Rose. It’s subtitled a novel of suspense, but it sounds like a historic thriller to me. Or, at least I hope so. The read-alike listed in Amazon, at least for me, is C.S. Harris’ When Maidens Mourn, due out March 6. I love the C.S. Harris St. Cyr series and have the book pre-ordered. If Lost Fragances is anything like St. Cyr, I’ll be enthralled. The proof will be in the reading.

My last and final book this week is The House of Velvet and Glass by Katherine Howe. This is another historical, but this author isn’t new to me. Katherine Howe also wrote The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, a debut novel about the Salem Witches that was absolutely compelling. Her new novel looks equally compelling, but concerns a young woman who loses herself after her closest family dies in the Titanic disaster. I received a print galley for review through Book Browse First Impressions in return for an honest review.

My poor Nightstand is full again. C’est la vie. And there are supposed to be lovely ebook giveaways from the BBPOC, too. So many books, so little time.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for Ebook Review Central. It’s time for the four-in-one ERC with Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books and Riptide Publishing. Tune in to see who the featured titles are!

 

Arctic Rising

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Tobias Bucknell’s Arctic Rising is a near-future science fiction techno-thriller that leads the cast, and the reader, at a breakneck paced tour of a thawed Arctic. Unfortunately for our heroine, she’s on this tour because someone really is out to get her. Fortunately for the reader, figuring out who turns up a grand scheme that keeps the reader guessing until the very end.

It’s also kind of a pre-apocalyptic story of eco-terrorism. What do I mean by pre-apocalyptic? The apocalypse hasn’t happened, yet, but if events in this story go pear-shaped, well, you can definitely see the apocalypse from here.

Anika Duncan begins the story as an airship pilot for the United National Polar Guard. The UNPG has airships patrolling the waters of the Arctic Circle to check for drug smuggling and occasionally nuclear waste dumping. Why? Because airships (read blimps) are cheap on fuel and fossil fuels are expensive and running out. Why are they needed? Because the Arctic Ice Cap has melted, and all that ocean is pretty empty. There’s nobody looking. Nuclear waste, as we already know, is a pain to get rid of. Dumping it in deep water no one is watching is cheap.

But when Anika’s gear pings a radioactive hotspot on the ship below her, she sets of a chain reaction of events much bigger than she could ever have imagined. The crew of the unidentified ship brings out heavy artillery and brings down her ship. Then they ram the debris. Crash landing in the Arctic Ocean is a fast way to die of hypothermia.

Anika’s co-pilot makes it to the hospital, but dies of his injuries. Anika did a better job getting her survival suit zipped up, so she is okay physically, but someone tries to run her off the road. And that’s only the first attempt on her life. Her house is blown up. She’s arrested by men who have no identity.

A friend —  who wants to be her girlfriend — smuggles her out. Anika’s friend Vy is a criminal, but Vy has connections. Right now, Anika needs friends in low-places just to figure out what is going on. But the more she discovers, the crazier things get. And the more collateral damage piles up around her.

Somebody wants to terraform the Earth, to turn back the global warming clock. They’ve even found a way to do it. But there are a lot of powerful people and corporations who like things just fine the way they are, and don’t want to change. They’re willing to let the future take care of itself.

Some of those people have found a nuke. Anika and her friends are caught in the middle. At Ground Zero.

Escape Rating A-: This is one of those books where you just saddle up and hang on for the ride. The story is all about the thrills and chills, and it has plenty.

Something about this story that ties into reality is the opening of the Northwest Passage. In the 1800s, explorers searched, and died, seeking the fabled Northwest Passage over the top of Canada from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The story of Sir John Franklin’s Expedition is especially interesting, because they found mummies from some members of the party in the 1980s.

The Northwest Passage is opening. Bowhead and gray whales have managed to make the crossing from the Pacific to the Atlantic through the Passage for the first time in centuries. A cruise ship sailed through the Passage in 2006 and a commercial freighter in 2008.

The other neat, funny, cool thing was the portrait of the new Arctic as the really, really last frontier, the place where everyone gets to be an extreme individualist. I lived in Anchorage for three years, and Bucknell’s portrait of the new Arctic was Alaska taken several steps further. Which totally worked.

Arctic Rising is one of those books where you read it and you keep thinking that things can’t get any crazier for the main characters, and yet, they do. And it just makes you want to keep reading even more!

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Big 6 publishers> ebooks> ebooks in libraries> libraries

And now libraries know that Random House is planning to use real silver for that lining.

The problem with Random House’s plan is that libraries don’t have all that much silver to give them  in this era of shrinking budgets.

On February 2, Random House, the only one of the “Big 6” publishers to provide ebooks to libraries without restrictions, made an announcement that they would continue their generous policy, but that there would be a price hike to deal with some of the issues surrounding permanent access to ebooks.

Most libraries probably expected the price to rise somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%. Maybe double.

The hammer fell March 1. Hammer as in auction hammer. Or the hammer of doom.

Yesterday, Random House tripled the prices of their ebooks. You read that right. An ebook that cost a library $15 on Monday, costs $45 today. The libraries are reeling from the sticker shock.

But what will this mean?

Library budgets are not growing, they are flat or shrinking. Public libraries are creatures of local government, and tax revenues at the local government level are still sucky. Let’s be blunt here.

If the per-title price rises significantly, as it has just done. and the budget stays flat, what will happen? In most cases, libraries will buy fewer titles with the same dollars. Some will rearrange their budgets as much as they can, but very, very few will be able to triple their ebook budgets.

What gets purchased in this scenario? High-demand titles get purchased, so the hold queues get filled. Or at least stay tamed. John Grisham does not lose many library sales out of this.

What doesn’t get purchased? Mid-list authors and debut authors, because there is very little money left in the budget with which to take a chance. And the next John Grisham and Nora Roberts and James Patterson have to come from somewhere. Some of them will come from self-publication Cinderella stories like Amanda Hocking, but some will still come from the mid-list. If they get the chance.

Unlike V.C. Andrews, most authors do not write from beyond the grave. What are the publishers planning to do when the current crop of bestselling juggernauts decide to retire?  The number one way that readers decide to purchase a book is because they liked the author’s last book. The trick seems to be to get people to read an author the first time. And with the demise of more and more bricks-and-mortar bookstores, that trick is getting harder all the time.

But protecting their authors is not what this move is about. Revenue numbers from 2011 are starting to come in from the major publishers, and the picture that emerges is very interesting. Sales of print are down, digital is up and profitability is up. Think about it for a minute. Digital books have no inventory, no print costs, and very low distribution costs. Most of the infrastructure to produce them already exists. For the publisher, they are almost pure profit.

Profitability is in no way a bad thing. It’s required for a business to remain in business. But let’s not pretend. Random House is charging more for their ebooks to libraries because Random House believes:

that pricing to libraries must account for the higher value of this institutional model, which permits e-books to be repeatedly circulated without limitation. The library e-book and the lending privileges it allows enables many more readers to enjoy that copy than a typical consumer copy. Therefore, Random House believes it has greater value, and should be priced accordingly.

In other words, because they can.

Under Her Brass Corset

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

Under Her Brass Corset by Brenda Williamson looked like steampunk when I picked it up from NetGalley. I mean, really, “brass corset”? What would you think?

Instead, think of it as the counterweight to Leslie Dicken’s The Iron Heart, which is steampunk but doesn’t explicitly say it’s steampunk. Under Her Brass Corset has a title that practically screams steampunk, but is more of a historic romance with fantasy and steampunk elements. Any time immortality and Avalon get mentioned, I call fantasy.

The hero has installed steam power on his ship, it does fly, and this is Victorian England, but he hides the steam power from anyone who is not in on his big secret, his immortality. (I’m not calling this a spoiler because it’s revealed to the reader very, very early in the story)

Abigail Thatch begins the story pretty much at the end of her rope. Her father was murdered only two months previously foiling a break-in of their home, and since then, her finances have been going steadily downhill. Her museum job isn’t enough to pay the bills, and the bank is threatening foreclosure.

In walks Jasper Blackthorne. Abigail doesn’t remember Captain Blackthorne, but he remembers her all too well. In between sea voyages, Blackthorne has watched over her all her life, just as he guarded her parents before her. Blackthorne is immortal, having drunk from the waters of Avalon over 400 years previously. He feels responsible for Abigail’s family, because he gave her grandfather a sip from the waters himself. Unfortunately not a big enough sip…her grandfather is immortal but rather absent-minded. He forgets all the children he has created over his very long life.

History records Abigail’s grandfather as Edward Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard the notorious pirate.

Jasper hid something in Abigail’s house before his last voyage: a clockworks compass that points to sources of the healing waters of Avalon, the waters that are sometimes called the “fountain of youth”. Jasper needs to get the compass back. He fears that Abigail’s father was murdered in an attempt to find it. Murdered by Abigail’s cousin, Eric Teach.

But Jasper has another reason for coming to see Abigail. He’s been watching over her from a distance all these years, and he’s seen her grow from child to girl to woman. As a child she was a delightful little sprite, but as a woman, she’s captured his heart and soul. And it tears him apart. Jasper loved a mortal woman once, 150 years before. She refused the gift of immortality, and he has never loved again.

But Abigail challenges him, body and spirit. She wants him, and the adventure he represents. She also knows that there is a treasure to be found with that clockworks compass; she simply doesn’t believe in his tales of immortality. Abigail needs a rich prize to rescue her home from the bank.

Abigail finds herself falling for Jasper, even though she thinks that everything he says might be a con. She doesn’t remember him from her childhood, but she instinctively trusts him, though her mind says she shouldn’t.

The journey they embark upon is filled with wonders. But also with great perils and dangerous sea monsters. But none more dangerous than Abigail’s long-lost family.

Escape Rating C+: I was expecting much more steampunk than this turned out to be. I like fantasy romance, but I wasn’t expecting one. There are definitely steampunk elements, but they arise because Jasper’s been inventing stuff for himself to keep people away. I tend to think of steampunk being more pervasive to the society-at-large.

The romance itself worked pretty well. I liked Jasper and Abigail, and could understand why they fell for each other. I also definitely got why she didn’t believe his story. From a rational standpoint, it was pretty far-fetched. On the other hand, since she didn’t believe him, she should have needed a LOT more convincing in order to go with him on that trans-Atlantic voyage.

For my willing suspension of disbelief, or the throwing out the window of it, there were one or more too many borrowed elements from other stories. Morgan le Fay and the Lady of the Lake and Avalon and Blackbeard the Pirate and Ponce de León! For this reader, it was a little over the top. Your mileage may vary.