Guest Post by Suzanne Johnson on Pirate Love + Giveaway

Posted on May 1, 2015April 30, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> Guest Posts

I’m not sure whether I love reading about romantic pirates in general, as the author asks in her guest post, but I am certain that I enjoy reading about her pirate in particular. Suzanne Johnson has turned the legend of Jean Lafitte into a fascinating and enigmatic character who always has his finger in too many pies.

After having read her entire Sentinels of New Orleans series so far (check out today’s review of Pirate’s Alley) I will say that in this case, Lafitte is a much better bet for our heroine than any of the dogs who have been, sometimes literally, sniffing around her. Read this awesome urban fantasy series for yourself and see if you agree!

Pirate Love
by Suzanne Johnson

When I introduced the early 19th-century pirate Jean Lafitte in the very opening scene of my Sentinels of New Orleans series, I had no intention of making him a major character. But the more I learned about him, the more fascinated I became—and I was thrilled when readers became enamored of my French pirate as well (he was my pirate by then), because it meant I had good reason to keep him in subsequent books.

But why? I mean, I’d like to say it’s Jean Lafitte himself and my incorporation of him into an urban fantasy—he was, after all, an enigmatic and mysterious figure. Tall and striking in appearance, reasonably well educated and exceptionally smart, with a sly and playful sense of humor, a natural leader, at home with New Orleans society and equally at home with the ruffians living in the bayous of Barataria.

He was also a smuggler at a time when piracy carried a death sentence, a man who didn’t hesitate to use violence if he felt it was needed, an arrogant man who flouted his intelligence and wealth over those he considered inferiors (i.e., most bureaucrats), a devious man.

But it’s not Lafitte, as much as I love him. It’s our fascination with pirates. There’s a whole romance subgenre built around pirates from a century or two earlier than Jean Lafitte—who really was the last great pirate of the Caribbean. (The legions of fans of the Disney “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise might or might not be fans of Johnny Depp’s sexily goofy Jack Sparrow; they are fans, however, of pirates.)

So what is it about pirates women love? They are perhaps the ultimate alpha male, and while we might not like alphas that much in real life, we do love them in our romance novels, right?

Alpha males are independent and, yeah, more than a tad bossy. Well, the fictional pirates we love are all that and more. We don’t, after all, daydream about the dude who’s swabbing the deck—we want the CAPTAIN of the pirates. He’s the one bad boy to rule them all, to borrow a phrase. He stands at the helm of the ship, riding the open waves while everyone hustles to avoid his wrath at the same time they respect him because he treats them fairly and pays them well.

The wind whips through his (enticingly long) hair, the breeze ruffles his (enticingly half-open) shirt that billows over his (enticingly tight) trousers. Other ships flee him. He’s confident, smart, daring, and has an (enticingly overactive) libido—but only when he crosses paths with the right woman.

Who might be us, of course, living vicariously through the heroine.

Alpha males though they might be, pirates had a moral code, by all accounts. In the village of pirates that sprang up around his (enticingly lavish) two-story home in the Baratarian swamps south of New Orleans, Jean Lafitte tolerated gambling and even allowed a few ladies of the evening to ply their wares. But any of his men accused of rape were sailed far, far, far offshore and set adrift without provisions.

Pirates were also (enticingly) hard to catch—not only for the authorities, but for women. They enjoy a woman’s company but they are too independent to become a love-stricken sap. Until, of course they cross paths with the (enticingly sassy and independent) right woman.

Who might be us, of course, living vicariously through the heroine.

So yeah, we romanticize the things we like about historical pirates—their independence and general badassitude—while ignoring the ugly parts like murder and brutality and the sheer discomfort of a life at sea, on the run.

Modern pirates? They’re armed with AK47s, prey on innocent people, and commit murder for money. They’re from places like Somalia rather than England and France. We do not romanticize them; will women three centuries now look back on them with the same lust, er, I mean fondness we have for the pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries?

Who knows? Till then, give me a bad boy with a cutlass and a bottle of rum any old day. How about you? Do you like reading about romantic pirates, or are they too alpha for you?

About the Author:Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal fiction from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities—including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual. She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick.Writing as Susannah Sandlin, she also is the author of the best-selling Penton Legacy paranormal romance series and The Collectors romantic thriller series. Elysian Fields, book three in the Sentinels of New Orleans series, won the 2014 Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence while her Sandlin-penned novel, Allegiance, is nominated for a 2015 Reviewer’s Choice Award from RT Book Reviews magazine.
Website: http://www.suzannejohnsonauthor.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Suzanne_Johnson
FB: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorSuzanneJohnson

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Review: Pirate’s Alley by Suzanne Johnson

Posted on May 1, 2015April 30, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genre: urban fantasy
Series: Sentinels of New Orleans #4
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Released: April 21, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Wizard sentinel DJ Jaco thought she had gotten used to the chaos of her life in post-Katrina New Orleans, but a new threat is looming, one that will test every relationship she holds dear.

Caught in the middle of a rising struggle between the major powers in the supernatural world—the Wizards, Elves, Vampires and the Fae—DJ finds her loyalties torn and her mettle tested in matters both professional and personal.

Her relationship with enforcer Alex Warin is shaky, her non-husband, Quince Randolph, is growing more powerful, and her best friend, Eugenie, has a bombshell that could blow everything to Elfheim and back. And that’s before the French pirate, Jean Lafitte, newly revived from his latest “death,” returns to New Orleans with vengeance on his mind. DJ’s assignment? Keep the sexy leader of the historical undead out of trouble. Good luck with that.

Duty clashes with love, loyalty with deception, and friendship with responsibility as DJ navigates passion and politics in the murky waters of a New Orleans caught in the grips of a brutal winter that might have nothing to do with Mother Nature.

War could be brewing, and DJ will be forced to take a stand. But choosing sides won’t be that easy.

My Review:

Pirate’s Alley, like all of the titles in Suzanne Johnson’s Sentinels of New Orleans series, is a street in New Orleans. In this particular case, Pirate’s Alley is a two-block-long pedestrian walkway between Royal Street and Jackson Square, at least according to Google maps and Google street view.

As a title, it also represents some of the events in the story. From Sentinel Drusilla Jaco’s perspective, it looks a lot like her own particular pirate, the historically undead Jean Lafitte, is building either a coalition or perhaps an army of preternaturals in the same way he build his pirate army in his real life. He takes on the dispossessed and the disaffected, and gives them a home and something to believe in.

It worked in the early 19th century, and it looks like it works just as well in the early 21st century.

In New Orleans, the boundary between what we call the “real” world and the Beyond was always thin. But Katrina reduced that thin (and always a bit permeable) line to absolutely nothing. And the powers-that-be, in this case the Wizard’s Council, have decided to make a virtue out of necessity and remove both the physical barrier and the rules and regulations that have kept the preternaturals out of the city, or hidden, for centuries.

New Orleans has become again what it has always been, an living experiment in extreme multiculturalism. Only in this case, it’s the wizards and the shapeshifters and the two-natured and the vampires and the elves and the fae and New Orleans own special part of this mixture – the historical undead.

After the events in the first three books, Royal Street (reviewed here), River Road (here) and Elysian Fields (here), the preternatural community is gearing up, or winding down, to one big and probably deadly showdown.

The events in Pirate’s Alley all center around that upcoming conflict, with Sentinel DJ Jaco, as usual, caught squarely in the middle.

Pirate’s Alley is much more about political maneuvering than any deeds of derring-do, not that there aren’t some of those. Most of the action takes place at the several attempts to hold an Interspecies Council Meeting, and all the various and sundry ways that meeting keeps getting interrupted, hijacked and or just plain destroyed. Unfortunately along with the building it’s being held in.

It seems as though every single faction has an internal conflict, one that is being fought both at the Council table and in bloody assassinations back at home. And DJ is firmly stuck in the middle of every single one of those conflicts, whether she wants to be or not.

DJ is a member of the Wizards Council, and as Sentinel, she is supposed to be working for them. Which is ok until they ask her to do something that she finds not just questionable, but downright morally repugnant. So she not only refuses to obey, but finds a way to outmaneuver her boss.

Her boyfriend Alex Warin can’t make up his mind or heart whether to help DJ or obey the Council. They are his boss too, and he’s a good little soldier who generally obeys orders.

DJ’s elven bondmate is trying to get DJ to live up to the bond he forced her into, and to take control of his own faction, attempting to use DJ as leverage, bait or muscle as it suits him. It does not suit her.

The only person who seems to understand DJ and want to help her do what she thinks is right is Jean Lafitte, the leader of the historical undead and DJ’s enemy turned friend. It’s not that Jean is altruistic, because he never is, but that he sees and likes DJ exactly as she is, and pretty much vice versa. DJ isn’t totally sure how she feels about Lafitte, but she knows he has her back.

Which is a good thing, because when the dust settles Lafitte’s Barataria estate in undead Old Orleans may be the only safe place for DJ to retreat to. With the fires of all her burnt bridges blazing behind her.

Escape Rating A-: As much as I loved this one, I will say that the politics are starting to get extremely convoluted. I hope that book 5 comes with a guide or cheat sheet or dramatis personae, complete with affiliations. Or a summary in the prologue.

DJ is the center of the story. It’s not just that she is telling it in the first person, but also that all the action revolves around her. She has ties to every group, some friendly, some not at all, but she connects in some way to every faction. Except that fae, and it looks like that connection is forming at the end of the story. Also the fae are Jean Lafitte’s business partners (nearly everyone is) and DJ is certainly connected to Lafitte. The question that lies between them concerns the nature of that connection.

In the story, every faction is gearing for war. They are also, for the most part, individually self-destructing as the status quo falls to pieces. A significant chunk of the conflict causes collateral damage among the human population that is supposed to remain ignorant of their collective existence.

With the Winter Prince of the Fae bringing an unnatural Arctic winter to New Orleans, that can’t possibly last.

A significant chunk of the stated conflict, as opposed to the underground one, revolves around DJ’s best friend Eugenie, who also represents that human collateral damage. Because all the factions have an agenda for the baby that Eugenie is carrying as a result of the Elven leader Quince Randolph’s pursuit of DJ by way of her best friend. Eugenie is now caught in the middle, and DJ is right there with her, both trying to get the preternaturals to stop arguing about Eugenie and the baby as though they were mere bargaining chips and not people, and to protect Eugenie from all the preternaturals who plan to imprison Eugenie supposedly for her own safety. Or theirs. DJ wants to do right by her friend, which means doing what a whole lot of other people consider wrong.

Which is where DJ’s love life, or sometimes lack of it, comes in. DJ and Alex Warin are attempting to have some kind of relationship. But for the ultra order conscious Alex, DJ the chaos magnet is often more than he can handle. He always finds himself caught between helping DJ and keeping to the straight and narrow that he prefers. And DJ finds herself making excuses and pretending to be someone other than she is in order to keep the relationship going.

She does not know what she feels for Lafitte. But she trusts him. Not to always do what DJ believes is the right thing, but to always be honest about whatever scheming he is doing. And he always has her back – he’s already died once to prove that to her. But most important of all, Lafitte likes and respects and enjoys her company for who she really is, and not someone she pretends to be.

So in the midst of all the chaos, DJ is stuck in her own personal quandary, with no end in sight for either conflict. It’s a perfect set up for book 5. Which can’t come soon enough for me.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Chaos Broken by Rebekah Turner

Posted on April 27, 2015May 19, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: urban fantasy
Series: Chronicles from the Applecross #3
Length: 225 pages
Publisher: Escape Publishing
Date Released: April 1, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, All Romance

The final installment of the Chronicles of Applecross trilogy finds Lora left in charge–and quickly losing control.

Lora Blackgoat is in charge. But after losing a lucrative contract, it looks like she’s also running her beloved benefactor’s mercenary company into the ground while he’s away on holidays. Her problems double when she discovers Roman, exiled nephilim warrior and current confusing love interest, is brokering a dangerous peace agreement.

When a new enemy emerges from across the ocean, threatening to tear the city apart, Lora finds herself taking on new and surprising allies, finally acknowledging the prophecy that haunts her and using it to her advantage.

My Review:

At least this time the cover picture of the guy looking over his shoulder actually makes a bit of sense. Not that every man, woman and otherkin doesn’t need to be looking over their shoulder (and in every other direction) just to stay alive in this story.

But the picture probably represents Roman, the exiled nephilim who is central to entirely too many people’s plots and plans, and many of those plans are not ones he would approve of or want to take part in.

In spite of Roman’s importance to the outcome of this particular story, it is still Lora Blackgoat’s show, and we still see events from her perspective. Unfortunately for her, one of those events is the financial catastrophe that the Blackgoat Runner and Mercenary Company has become under her watch.

Her adoptive parents, Gideon Blackgoat and Orella Warbreeder, left Lora in charge while they take a much-needed vacation. Unfortunately for everyone, Lora is no good at being in charge. She’s not terribly good with people, and she mostly does an excellent job of pissing possible clients off. The town of Harkin is going through an economic downturn, and paying clients are far and far between.

She doesn’t want to call her parents back to bail her out, but she knows they are expecting to return to a going concern, and not a bankrupt business.

Because Lora is always the center of chaos, things just go from bad to worse.

The only two jobs Lora can turn up are weirder than normal. She is contracted to find the cat belonging to the school headmistress (and her former teacher). Lora just thinks that job is beneath her. The other one is even worse – telling her life story to a playwright so he can turn it into his masterpiece. Lora hates talking about herself, her very messy origins, or how she feels or thinks about anything. The writer doesn’t like her either, but he needs a big hit every bit as badly as she needs the money.

But finding a cat should be (relatively) simple. Instead, she finds a dead teacher and what seems like a budding psychopath. Oh, and a magic calling circle around the dead body. Getting the local religious hierarchy into the middle of her business is the last thing Lora needs, because they suspect her of dark magic, they exiled one of her boyfriends, and they fired her.

In spite of that, the local chapter isn’t all bad. But the fanatics from the capital are a whole other matter, and they’re coming for a visit.

And that budding psychopath – well, that situation is even worse than Lora can imagine, even though if there is one thing Lora is good at, it’s finding the dark cloud around the silver lining. This time, she just isn’t thinking dark enough.

Escape Rating B: Once this story really gets going, it is impossible to put down. I absolutely adore Lora as a point of view character. It’s not just that she is a chaos magnet, although she certainly is – but that she is so human in the midst of her heroism.

She always needs more coffee and more sleep. Her love life is a confused mess. She misses her parents but knows that she needs to be independent. She dreads taking over Blackgoat Company, but knows that Gideon wants to retire. She can’t be diplomatic to save her soul, but she’s not afraid to step in and help people when they need it. She does what she thinks is right, even when everyone around her tells her that it’s wrong.

I’ll also admit that I loved her reaction when her friend kept handing her the baby. She has the same reaction I do. She isn’t sure what to do with the child, she doesn’t have a biological clock ticking, and she is uncomfortable as hell and scared of doing the wrong thing. Not all women want babies, and Lora certainly doesn’t.

That she is having a serious problem committing to anyone isn’t the issue in this case. She just isn’t pining for motherhood. Period. There may also be a bit of being correctly concerned about whatever genetic craziness she might pass on, but that definitely isn’t all of it.

The big, overarching story here is about freedom – especially freedom from religious fanaticism. Harkin is fairly far from the capital, and it has developed a kind of live and let live attitude toward all the otherkin in the city. The local Witch Hunters Guild is even relaxing some of the rules that their nephilim are forced to live under. That matters not just because Roman is a nephilim, but because the Guild’s treatment of nephilim is slavery.

Nephilim who agitate seem to go berserk, but the ones who have managed to leave the Weald for our Outlands are instantly cured. So is the berserker stage truly inevitable, or are they being poisoned to keep them in line?

The head honcho of the Guild descends upon Harkin in order to nip any possible resistance or rebellion in the bud. He starts witch burnings and otherkin exiles just after he threatens the local government into complete submission.

He decides that Lora is the biggest threat to his reign of terror out there (he’s actually kind of right) and tries to take her out. Everyone in town comes to her rescue, which was awesome.

This is a story with plots within plots, and wheels within wheels. Everything falls into place (or gets dropped, or is killed) in order to bring this series to an absolutely slam-bang conclusion – complete with lots of real slams and bangs.

However, the Chronicles from the Applecross are definitely a case where it is absolutely necessary to have read the entire thing for all the plots and all the players to fit together. In fact, it’s probably best to read the whole thing in a gulp. I read the first two books, Chaos Born and Chaos Bound back in December 2013. It took a good chunk of Chaos Broken for me to remember all the players and find my old scorecard. But it was definitely worth it.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Deadly Calm and Cold by Susannah Sandlin + Giveaway

Posted on December 16, 2014December 15, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the author via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: romantic suspense
Series: The Collectors, #2
Length: 281 pages
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date Released: December 2, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

How far will ordinary people go to protect their secrets? The Collectors’ games are as much about manipulating lives as finding lost treasure. Everyone is expendable as the ruthless C7 pushes people into gambling with their lives in order to find priceless objects lost to history.

Samantha Crowe’s secrets could ruin her career, while Brody Parker’s could get him killed. They become pawns for two Collectors seeking Bad King John’s crown jewels, which disappeared in rural England back when Robin Hood roamed Nottingham. This time, however, the Collectors—a ruthless dotcom billionaire and a desperate London detective—might not be playing for the same team, leaving Sam and Brody trapped in the middle.

One thing’s for sure: if either hopes to survive, Sam and Brody will have to find a way to overcome their distrust—and their growing attraction—in order to succeed on this winner-take-all treasure hunt.

My Review:

So far, the Collectors series is turning out to be the love child of every historical conspiracy treasure hunt series that has ever been written. If the first book in the series, Lovely, Dark and Deep (reviewed here) is a cross between National Treasure and Titanic, then Deadly, Calm and Cold is the product of mixing The DaVinci Code with Indiana Jones. In other words, we have a treasure hunt for a historic artifact with nasty people on the tail (or trail) of our heroes.

The big difference is that all those other fictional treasure hunters are in it for the glory, or the thrill of discovery. At any rate, they volunteered. In the Collectors series, that is far from the case.

The evil baddies in the Collectors series are those collectors. They are a group of very rich and extremely self-indulgent, self-centered private collectors who will stop at nothing to add rare and priceless artifacts to their private collections. They are certainly not above a bit of blackmail, or even outright murder, to coerce experts into finding the prizes they seek. For the C7, it’s all just a big game. They get their thrills by grinding people into dust and beating their competition (the other C7 members) to whatever big prize is in their sights.

In Deadly, Calm and Cold, the big prize is King John’s lost crown jewels. Yes, I mean that King John, the one in the Robin Hood stories. Historically, he was the signer of the Magna Carta, because he was a despotic ruler even for those times. His nobles made him sign the “Great Charter” to protect themselves from his excesses. King John also really did lose his crown jewels in the area portrayed in the book, the east coast of England where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire.

Just as in Lovely, Dark and Deep, our story features a woman who is a technical expert on the subject at hand, and a man who finds himself in the middle of her search, but is hiding somewhere off the beaten path for reasons of his own.

Samantha Crowe is a graduate student in history, on a one-term research fellowship in England to delve into the history of King John’s lost treasure. She is also vulnerable to blackmail for some less-than-noble dealings both before and after college. She has a juvenile record, for stealing to support her addict-mother. While her motives were kind of good and kind of enabling, what happened is understandable. But it isn’t info that she disclosed to her university. Neither is her method of getting that research fellowship – her professor pulled strings to give it to her as a way of getting her out of the country and keeping her quiet about their now-over affair. She thought it might be love, he was just cheating on his unsuspecting wife with his equally unsuspecting grad student.

But sending dirty pictures to the student newspaper will pretty much kill both their careers. Or certainly hers. When the C7 member decides that the treasure she is researching is worth his time, she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. It doesn’t matter that the pictures are photoshopped – by the time any investigation figures that out, the damage will be done.

Brody Parker gets dragged into hunt because his house is part of the land where John’s treasure might be hidden – and because he has secrets of his own. Brody Parker isn’t even his real name – he’s in witness protection as a whistleblower in a major U.S. racketeering case. He’s spent years being paranoid that the mob really will track him down. C7 thinks he’s the perfect person to blackmail, but the same tech skills that brought down a big piece of organized crime make him the perfect person to help Sam turn the tables on the mysterious C7.

It helps that the C7 is facing a whistleblower of their very own. While the “big boss” is hard to find, the guy who is playing both ends against the middle is forced to the conclusion that helping Sam and Brody get out from under is his best chance of a new life.

In the adrenaline fueled treasure hunt, Sam and Brody discover that their best chance of a new life is with each other – if they survive.

Escape Rating B+: If this series continues to follow the pattern set in the first two books, it’s a winner. The woman is the expert, and while the man is the muscle, he never forgets that they are partners – he doesn’t take over everything including her. Brody, just as Shane did in Lovely, Dark and Deep, has secrets of his own that make him a perfect foil for Sam.

Both Sam and Brody, like Gillian and Shane before them, have a lot of damage that requires the other to help them heal. The way that they start out, equally attracted but equally untrusting, gives them a difficult road to travel towards each other, but makes their love story fit the adventure.

I loved that the treasure was real – there is even a nod to the discovery of Richard III’s body and how medieval treasure can still be found. The nods to actual historical events grounded the story in a way that some of the antecedents like The DaVinci Code are not, fun as they are.

In many ways, the villains of the series, those C7 Collectors, come off as a bit too “bwahaha” evil. Providing Sam and Brody with the more mundane double-crosser to negotiate with brought that mysterious band of evildoers down to earth.

For a good time with a heart-pounding adventure that has a rocky romance at its center, add The Collectors to your collection. (Sorry, that pun was irresistible, and so is the series!)

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Tears of the Rose by Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on December 15, 2014December 14, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: fantasy
Series: The Twelve Kingdoms, #2
Length: 337 pages
Publisher: Kensington Books
Date Released: November 25, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Three sisters. Motherless daughters of the high king. The eldest is the warrior-woman heir;the middle child is shy and full of witchy intuition;and the youngest, Princess Amelia, she is as beautiful as the sun and just as generous.

Ami met her Prince Charming and went away to his castle on the stormy sea-cliffs—and that should have been her happily ever after. Instead, her husband lies dead and a war rages. Her middle sister has been taken into a demon land, turned into a stranger. The priests and her father are revealing secrets and telling lies. And a power is rising in Ami, too, a power she hardly recognizes, to wield her beauty as a weapon, and her charm as a tool to deceive…

Amelia has never had to be anything but good and sweet and kind and lovely. But the chess game for the Twelve Kingdoms has swept her up in it, and she must make a gambit of her own. Can the prettiest princess become a pawn—or a queen?

My Review:

The Twelve Kingdoms series is all about playing the chess game of power. In that chess game, Princess Amelia moves down the board as a pawn, and turns herself into a queen. It’s a long and hard journey, with pain, suffering, and eventually joy and purpose at the end.

But Amelia needs a lot of strengthening to get to that end. She started the series not just as the youngest daughter of High King Uorsin, but also as a fairy tale princess who is spoiled and protected and very much used to getting her own way.

It does not make her a nice person. It also doesn’t make her a bad person. But she is thoughtless and uncaring, and definitely believes that the world revolves around her and her beauty — until it doesn’t.

Her fairy tale prince is killed at the end of the awesome first book in this series, The Mark of the Tala (enthusiastically reviewed here). Prince Hugh is seemingly killed at the hand of Amelia’s sister, Andromeda. Or at least that is what Amelia is told.

Amelia needs to learn not to accept everything she is told. What matters about Hugh’s death is that he was killed in an unjust war fomented by her oathbreaking father, whoever wielded the blade. His death shouldn’t have happened because nothing about the ongoing conflict between the Twelve Kingdoms and the Tala should have happened.

Amelia’s journey is to learn to separate truth from lies, and to embrace her stronger self and not let herself be a pawn at the hands of others, especially not her father or her father-in-law.

The rulers only want the child that she carries, the last child of the Prince of Avonlidgh. When the seers all predict the child is a boy, both her father and her father-in-law proclaim the child their heir, and start fighting over who will be the next High King, and where the seat of that High King should be.

It’s up to Amelia to become the queen that she can be, and not the pawn of the old men who have controlled her life so far.

But first she has to figure out what it means to be a grown woman, and to be a queen. And to be the daughter of the last Queen of the Tala. Because if either of the old men win, all it will mean is more war over a land that is dying and can’t support it any longer.

If Amelia can find her own way forward, she can be the Queen that Avonlidgh needs, and become the woman that her mother hoped she would be. She just has to believe that she has her own power within her, and learn to use it.

Escape Rating B+: I loved Princess Andromeda in The Mark of the Tala, and I think that oldest sister Ursula is a fantastic example of the warrior princess, but Amelia does not start this story (or even middle this story) as a sympathetic person.

While she is currently going through one hell of a trauma, she comes off as having always been a spoiled, pampered brat. Her transformation is stunning, but she starts out with a long way to go.

I really enjoy the worldbuilding in the Twelve Kingdoms, and we get a lot more information about how things in general are going wrong, and what will need to be done to stop it. Amelia seriously needs to step up.

There are a lot of scenes with sister Ursula, and I can’t wait for her book, The Talon of the Hawk. Ursula reminds me a lot of the warrior woman Cassandra Pentaghast in Dragon Age Inquisition, and if the comparison holds, her story is going to be fantastic.

But Amelia is a pawn for much of Tears of the Rose, and she needs to learn not to be a pawn. She’s not sympathetic at the beginning, but she does learn to think and do for herself.

There is a love story in this one, in spite of Amelia’s Prince being dead at the beginning. Ash is an enigma of a character – we don’t find out who or what he is until Amelia does. What makes him so integral a part of Amelia’s story is that he makes her think, and helps her to eventually think for herself.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Bewitching Book Tours Hot Holiday Giveaway

Posted on November 29, 2014November 23, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways

Bewitching Book Tours is running their second annual holiday giveaway, and it is massive! There are lots of prizes, including a Kindle Fire, Amazon gift cards, and ebooks by Bewitching authors! For a chance to win, use the Rafflecopter below:

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Review: Falling from the Light by Regan Summers + Giveaway

Posted on November 24, 2014November 23, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook
Genre: urban fantasy, paranormal romance
Series: Night Runner, #3
Length: 278 pages
Publisher: self-published
Date Released: November 24, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Phoenix, AZ

All Sydney Kildare wants is a minute in the slow lane, some time to decide where she’s going with her vampire lover, Malcolm Kelly. But after sitting out the last battle, the powerful Master Bronson is giving orders again, and he isn’t above blackmailing his former courier to get what he wants.

With Mal sent to track a vicious killer, Syd is forced to infiltrate a pharmaceutical company responsible for a drug that turns vampires into real monsters. She’s unprepared and alone, but fiercely determined. If her investigation doesn’t satisfy the Master, Malcolm will pay the price. A wrong turn throws her into the middle of a vampire power play. Caught between twisting forces, with their freedom at stake, she’ll have to decide what’s more important: love, power or revenge. But choosing what feels right might turn out all wrong.

My Review:

The story in Falling from the Light is definitely a reminder that the vampires that have become the heroes of so much of urban fantasy and paranormal romance draw their origins from the horror side of the house.

In this book, very bad vampires do bad things to bad people, and also do bad things to good people. Even good vampires spend so much energy posturing for the nastier members of their group that they spray a LOT of collateral damage among their human and vampire companions.

Also this is a “things are always darkest just before they turn completely black” kind of story. Sydney gets so far down that “bottom looks like up”. In other words, this is the story of how Sydney falls from the light into nearly permanent darkness, and then has to claw her way back. after a trauma that guarantees she’ll never be quite the same.

She’ll be okay, because she’s incredibly tough, but she won’t be the same. The story ends with Sydney and her vampire lover Mal hoping that they can escape the crap that they’ve gotten into for good. Of course, somebody has to die to make that happen. I will leave the “who” for you to find out.

The Night Runner series takes place in a world where the vampires have not just come out of the coffin, but where they seem to have their fangs into a whole lot of the criminal organizations and quite a few private companies. (When you live forever, you have lots of time to compound interest on your investments)

Sydney, and Malcolm, (sometimes it’s the other way around) are pawns in a world-wide vampire power struggle. At first, In Don’t Bite the Messenger (reviewed here) it seems as though the more nasty vamps were using Sydney to get to the vamp she worked for. In Running in the Dark (reviewed here) the more nasty vamps were using Sydney to get to Malcolm.

In Falling from the Light, both sets of vampires (let’s call them more nasty and less nasty) are using Sydney to get to Malcolm and Malcolm to get to Sydney. And since Sydney is the poor squishy human, she’s collateral damage no matter whose agenda is currently in play.

Including, unfortunately for their relationship, Malcolm’s agenda. He pretends to be worse than he is to protect her from the true villains, but nothing quite works like they planned.

The dark at the end of Sydney’s fall from the light is very dark indeed. It takes a supreme sacrifice, blind faith, and one hell of a lot of luck to reach the light at the end of this tunnel. But it’s worth it.

Escape Rating B-: It’s Sydney’s character that makes this series, which makes it very difficult (read that as gut-wrenching) when Sydney finds herself a captive of the nasty and insane vamps. What happens to her is very rough.

She’s also subjected to constant reminders that she and even Malcolm are just pawns in other vampire games, and that the vampires mostly consider her as talking food at worst or an intelligent pet at best. She has no rights, she’s physically outclassed, and her life is so worthless to most vampires that they have no comprehension of her thoughts or feelings. There are no laws that protect her except the law of the jungle, and vampires are excellent at maneuvering that to their own advantage.

Sydney only has one ace in the hole; she is immune to vampire glamour, but no one knows why. At least not until the boss vampire reveals it to her in this book, just in time for her to use those talents to save the day. Or at least the epilog.

But Sydney spends a lot of the first ⅔ of the story being beaten and beaten down, and while it was good to see her finally emerge into the light at the end, it was VERY tough to watch her suffer. The world of the Night Runners isn’t the same without Sydney’s snark, so it was great to see her recover it at the end.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Regan is giving away 4 ebook copies of Falling from the Light in the winners’ choice of format

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews + Giveaway

Posted on October 30, 2014November 3, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: urban fantasy, paranormal romance
Series: Hidden Legacy #1
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Avon
Date Released: October 28, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Nevada Baylor is faced with the most challenging case of her detective career—a suicide mission to bring in a suspect in a volatile case. Nevada isn’t sure she has the chops. Her quarry is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, who can set anyone and anything on fire.

Then she’s kidnapped by Connor “Mad” Rogan—a darkly tempting billionaire with equally devastating powers. Torn between wanting to run or surrender to their overwhelming attraction, Nevada must join forces with Rogan to stay alive.

Rogan’s after the same target, so he needs Nevada. But she’s getting under his skin, making him care about someone other than himself for a change. And, as Rogan has learned, love can be as perilous as death, especially in the magic world.

My Review:

This one gave me a terribly marvelous book hangover. I finished it but I still want to be in this world, to the point where I’m having a terrible time picking up my next book.

As the introduction to this newly created magical version of the 21st century, Burn for Me is definitely a winner. I actually had to put this review away for a night to regain some perspective; otherwise it would have all devolved into fangirl squeeing, and nobody needs to see that.

Burn for Me is urban fantasy, in the way that the early Kate Daniels books are urban fantasy; we see that the main characters seriously have the hots for each other, but there are damn good reasons why one or the other is certain that acting on those hots is a no-win scenario for them, and they’re probably right as the story begins.

In this world, sometime in the early Victorian era some enterprising scientist (and there were a lot of them back then) started playing with a serum to give people what we would call superpowers. So this isn’t a magic-working type urban fantasy, this is a science-based one, for loose definitions of science.

This being loosely SF, the original recipients of the serum were military; the powers-that-were were making the usual attempt to create supersoldiers. And they seem to have succeeded, but there was a side-effect that they didn’t count on – the powers the serum granted turned out to be hereditary. As I said, loosely SF.

By the point of the early 21st century of Burn for Me, the original serum recipients’ families have had several generations of matchmaking to produce new and better powers, and those families are the powers-that-are in this universe. The major powered families are Primes, and they are both families and mega-corporations with the emphasis on the corporation part.

This story pits one little family against three Prime mega-corps, but what is fascinating is that the underdog is neither as under nor as dog as the reader thinks.

Nevada Baylor is the principal investigator of Baylor Investigations Agency, and it’s her duty to keep her family afloat. Her mother is a slightly disabled war vet, and her grandmother is a mechanical wizard (literally) but her dad is dead and her entire family, including her younger sisters and her cousins, depends on the family firm for their home and livelihood.

She gets trapped in a three-way pissing contest between the high-hat investigations firm that owns their debts, and two families fighting over the fate of their children. This looks like no-win all the way around.

MII is throwing Nevada and her family under the Pierce family bus. Adam Pierce has spent a few years honing his bad boy/rebel image by starting fires in public places and pretending to eschew the family money. He’s escalated to killing people as collateral damage while robbing banks, but no one knows why. His family wants him back in one piece.

But part of his collateral damage this time is a disowned member of House Rogan, and his mother wants him saved. She calls on her ex-military brother, Mad Rogan, to get her kid out.

Pierce uses Nevada to keep his family off his back. Rogan uses Nevada as bait for Pierce. Nevada just wants to save her family, but she may have to die to accomplish that.

Or own up to the truly awesome power hidden inside her.

Escape Rating A: Nevada is the character who shines in this story. It’s all on her, and she shoulders the burden every step of the way. Not just because we see the story from her perspective, but because we empathize with the fix she is in and her reasons for her actions.

She feels so responsible. It’s not just that she is responsible for her family, but she is carrying a bucketload of guilt about the way her dad died. Her dilemma of whether to reveal his cancer against his wishes, and how to pay for his treatments and the financial burden vs the extra time it bought is heartbreaking. She hasn’t resolved her feelings, and she can’t.

Burn for Me could have so easily gone down the romantic triangle route, but Nevada is much too smart for that. As much as her grandmother may drool over Adam Pierce’s pictures in the gossip rags, Nevada knows he’s just using her. He’s so self-centered he’s incapable of hiding his agenda. He’s playing her, but she’s also playing him.

The opening stages of Nevada’s relationship with Mad Rogan are much more complex. He’s trying to save his nephew, and she’s trying to protect her family. They start out in very unequal places of power, but Nevada’s ability to go toe-to-toe with him changes the dynamic. His family has generations of power behind them, but Nevada herself is his equal, just not in a way that anyone expects.

Some of it has to do with her contentment with who she is and what she is, some of it is that their power works better together than it does separately. Figuring that out is going to take some time, because Nevada is looking for someone to be her partner, and Rogan doesn’t have experience doing anything that isn’t ultimately selfish, even if it benefits the other party as much as it does himself.

Watching them struggle towards each other is going to be awesome.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Ilona is giving away 1 print copy of BURN FOR ME along with some BURN FOR ME swag to one lucky U.S. winner.

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Guest Post by Author Jeffe Kennedy on Ebooks and Libraries + Giveaway

Posted on October 24, 2014October 23, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | blog tours> Giveaways> Guest Posts

My featured guest for today is Jeffe Kennedy, the author of the marvelous fantasy romance series, Covenant of Thorns. The series concludes with today’s featured review book, Rogue’s Paradise, which answers so many of the questions that series fans have been waiting for.

In her guest post, Jeffe talks about one of the subjects near and dear to my heart, getting ebooks into libraries.

I love that Reading Reality focuses on ebooks and ebook integration into libraries. This is partly because libraries and librarians have always been such a huge part of my life as a reader. As a writer, too, which is less visible to me. But more and more, librarians come up to me at events and tell me how my ebooks are in their collections and I should know how often they’re checked out and how their patrons just love, love, love them! I’m glad they tell me, because otherwise I have no way of knowing that.

I also appreciate that Marlene is dedicated to bringing ebooks into libraries, especially genre books, because I strongly feel that, without Carina and their willingness to take a chance on my digital series, A Covenant of Thorns, then these books might never have seen the light of day. That’s the terrific thing about ebook publishers—they’ve allowed books that don’t neatly fit into genre categories to have a chance.

When I started Rogue’s Pawn,, I had no idea that I was writing a story that would “fall into the cracks between genres.” My tale of a modern woman, a professor of neuroscience who passes through a magical gate at Devils Tower and ends up in Faerie—exactly as in the tales of old—would maybe be an urban fantasy. Only with more romance. And sexier.

Okay, like many newbie writers, I had no idea what I was doing. I understood my story, but not how the marketplace worked.

Since I first started shopping that book—to praise for the writing and imagination, followed by rejection for marketability—the market has changed. Carina called it Fantasy Romance and now there’s lots more of those books out there. The Covenant of Thorns trilogy doesn’t sit squarely in Fantasy Romance, but it gets to be in the club still. More, the books have found readers and I’ve gotten to write others.

All because people embraced ebooks and the windows they open.

I couldn’t be more thrilled!

Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook. Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera, which released beginning January 2, 2014. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and a fifth, the highly anticipated erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, will release starting in July.

She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Foreword Literary.

To learn about Jeffe, visit her website or blog or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

GIVEAWAY

Because I enjoyed the Covenant of Thorns series so much, I want to give some lucky reader the chance to enjoy it too. So, the prize is the winner’s choice of Rogue’s Pawn, Rogue’s Possession or Rogue’s Paradise. These are all ebook only, so anyone can win!

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Review: Rogue’s Paradise by Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on October 24, 2014October 27, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook
Genre: paranormal romance, fantasy romance
Series: Covenant of Thorns #3
Length: 280 pages
Publisher: Carina Press
Date Released: September 8, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, All Romance

Pregnant, possessed, and in love with a man I don’t dare to trust—those are the consequences of the risks I took to save my life. But Faerie, the land of blood and magic, is filled with bitter ironies, and the bargains I made now threaten me and my unborn child.

The darkly sensual fae noble Rogue still tempts me to danger and desire. As we await the birth of our child, I’ve been forced to question whether our offspring is part of a bargain Rogue once made to save himself. He can’t tell me the truth due to a spell the vicious Queen Titania has him under. Would he betray our family against his will? Could I ever forgive him if he does?

Rogue insists on an eternal commitment from me, even as Titania’s forces close in on us. I don’t know if Rogue and I can withstand her onslaught, or that of the beast within me. But I will not stop looking for answers—even if it brings the walls of Faerie crashing down.

My Review:

The fae world in the Covenant of Thorns is built on the concept that powerful mages need to be careful what they wish for, because they might get it.

In other words, if someone says “don’t make me call my flying monkeys” you can bet that they really have flying monkeys on call. (This happens and it’s awesome).

But magic is the power to essentially wish things into being. Including “True Love”, because that seems to be the only power on Earth or in Faerie capable of stopping the Queen Bitch Titania. Who also happens to be mad as a hatter, along with being nearly all powerful.

But not quite. The sorcerer Rogue has the idea that the one thing she can’t win against is two equally powerful mages who willingly share power equally. And the only thing that would make that possible is complete trust. In other words, true love on both sides.

There’s two problems. Rogue wished for a woman who might be capable of being that equally powerful sorceress and might be able to love him. What he got was a woman from our non-magical world with great potential, and he spends a good chunk of Rogue’s Pawn (see review) manipulating her and the situation so that she can come to control her power.

Manipulation does not make for a good path to trust and eventual love, so Rogue makes as many problems for himself as he does solutions. Neither he nor any of the fae know much about love, if anything. His learning curve on that subject is incredibly high, and the cost is one that is paid not only by himself, but also by that woman he brought to faerie, Gwynn.

While the story in Rogue’s Possession (see review) may seem by the title that Gwynn is “owned” by Rogue, it isn’t strictly true. It also isn’t strictly not, as she spends much of the series having her agency taken away, and then fighting to get it back. Rogue is trying to seduce her rather than own her, but his ability to understand her true nature comes in fits and starts. Two steps forward, one step back.

Meanwhile, Gwynn has promised, because she had no other choice at the time, to give Rogue her first-born child. She did not stipulate a time, but Titania drugged them both and made sure Gwynn got pregnant. Titania wants to steal the child for her own really disgusting purposes. She needs to be stopped.

Rogue finally finds the way to Gwynn’s heart. Or, in the face of the overwhelming threat, Gwynn decides that since she’s already pregnant, she might as well reap all the benefits of her status. The worst has already happened, so giving in to Rogue’s seduction seems like a reward in comparison.

Together, they have the power to beat Titania back from her campaign to control both Faerie and Earth. But in order to do that, Gwynn has to trust Rogue utterly. Which is something that he has not exactly earned. But still desperately needs.

His wish for “True Love” has bitten him, too. And it’s the best thing that ever happened to him and to Faerie. But only if they all survive.

Escape Rating A-: This entire story, from the beginning in Rogue’s Pawn, works because of Gwynn’s voice. The entire story is in her first-person perspective, so we see this entire strange new world through the eyes of someone who has our sensibilities. As she tries to make sense of things to herself, she also makes sense of them for us.

There’s a thread through the entire series about Gwynn’s agency or lack thereof. At the very beginning, she loses control of her immediate future because someone has to train her in using her incredibly powerful magic. Otherwise, her every thought transforms the world around her beyond bearing.

But that training is both emotionally and physically painful; everything she learns leaves her with a bad case of PTSD and an unwillingness to trust anyone who has been responsible for anything that’s happened to her.

Especially Rogue.

She learns painfully that every thing in Faerie is limited by promises and vows; no words are casual. It is only in this final installment that she knows enough about what is happening around her to understand why Rogue has done the things that he has, and how much he is bound by events that occurred before he wished her into Faerie.

The revelations about the true nature of the Fae, and the true insanity of Titania, make Gwynn (and the reader) understand how high the stakes have been from the very beginning.

The world, as a great writer once said, is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. That may be true, but Gwynn’s world is marvelous strange, and there are fantastic and wonderful stories told there.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Pirate Love by Suzanne Johnson

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Pirate Love
by Suzanne Johnson

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