"Texas Gothic," by Rosemary Clement-Moore

I was a bit ashamed to pick this novel up from my shelf, only to realize it was an ARC dated back to 2011. Oops. I was busy, okay!

Amy Goodnight is the one non-witchy girl in a family full of witches and so she's made it her job to keep her kooky female relatives from letting their various magical cats out of their respective magical bags. Even though her own sister, Phin, could give two bagged-cat farts about the secrecy of her witchcraft-related experiments.

Anyhoo, Amy and Phin are spending the summer taking care of their Aunt Hyacinth's farm (she's a botanical soap witch, for reals), when Amy runs afoul of the Hot Cowboy Neighbour, Ben McCulloch. Rumours of a ghost on his property have been hurting his family business (especially after a few of his workers are mysteriously injured on the job) so of course he blames the witchy Goodnight family for spreading those rumours.

The only problem? Amy spots a real ghost, and when her paranormal encounter coincides with the discovery of human remains on the McCulloch land, she realizes all the weird accidents that have been happening to Ben's workers might not be so accidental. She just has to convince Ben the ghost is real, and enlist her witch sister's magical help, all the while trying to hide the fact that magic is real.

While this novel was charmingly written (Amy has a hilariously cynical narrative voice), it turned out to be lighter than expected. In several ways. First of all, the story is not as dark as the description led me to believe. It's very much in the Nancy Drew/Scooby Doo vein of Meddling Kids vs. Incompetent Adults. Secondly, for a novel whose protagonist is from a family of witches, there's not that much magic in it. There's a potion or two, one hilarious scene with a magical bottle of shampoo, and a ghost-detecting machine that Phin builds, but the fantasy in this story is strangely absent and doesn't really affect the plot. Most of the plot happens due to non-magical teenage detective work, which was a bit of a let down.

It's not terribly written, and the pacing is decent, but the back cover copy promises a story that the novel just doesn't deliver. It's light-hearted fluff, so if that's your thing, go ahead.

Do Not Read If: You expect an actually dark and gothic novel; you're looking for an explicitly magical plot involving spells; you hate Hot Teen Cowboys; you hate dogs; you hate ghosts; you hate goats; you hate storylines that hinge on someone hearing "goats" when the speaker meant "ghosts."

C

Review Round-Up: "The Sweet Dead Life," "The Governess Affair," and "The Third Angel"

Okay, let's look at the facts. I read a lot of books, and I recently spent some time away when I didn't have time to update my computer. The result is a bit of a review and post backlog, so, in the spirit of efficiency, I will be combining these three books in one mega-review in order to clear my schedule and start reading the truly monstrous number of books I lugged home from Book Expo America.

The Sweet Dead Life, by Joy Preble (SoHo Teen, 2013).

This was a novel I'd actually picked up last year at Book Expo 2012 but hadn't read yet. A slim but weird tome, it benefits from having a truly hilarious voice in its POV character, Jenna Samuels.

The novel starts out with a typically dark-YA situation. 13-year-old Jenna and her stoner older brother Casey have been scraping the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet. Their father walked out on them five years ago, and their increasingly depressed mother no longer goes to her job, leaves the house, or puts on clean clothes.

Oh, and Jenna's also suffering from a mysterious, debilitating illness that no doctor's been able to diagnose. When she collapses in a seizure, her brother rushes her to the hospital - but because he's also stoned out of his gourd, he crashes the car and dies.

Or not. Suddenly he turns up in the hospital - miraculously alive, healed, acne-free, and accompanied by a sudden new purpose in life and a mysterious mentor named Amber. Apparently, Casey was not destined to die this year, so the Powers That Be have imbued him with angelic powers and sent him back to protect his sister and save their family - since their father's disappearance, their mother's depression, and Jenna's illness might be the result of nefarious design instead of simply bad luck.

The plotting of this story is a little hit-or-miss (and it gets downright science fictional at the end), but beneath it beats an entertaining, sympathetic heart as Jenna enlivens the story with her hilarious observations about Texas, Mexican food, nosy angels, and how much she loves and depends on her brother more than she'd like to admit. A solidly entertaining story.
B

The Governess Affair, by Courtney Milan (2012).

I chose a novella to read on my plane ride over to Book Expo America - mainly because I knew I would want to dive into my swag books as quickly as possible.

The prequel to Courtney Milan's Brothers Sinister series (this story involves the parents of the future protagonists), our hero is Hugo Marshall, a coal miner's son who dragged himself up from nothing and currently works as an unofficial Fixer of Problems for a spoiled and cruel Duke.

His boss is in dire financial straits thanks to being on the outs with his purse-string-wielding duchess, and if Hugo can clean up the Duke's messes enough to merit a reconciliation, he'll win 500 pounds and be able to start his own business empire.

His plans are stymied when Serena Barton, a former governess, sets up camp outside the Duke's townhouse to shame him with a silent protest. Serena was forced to keep silent when the Duke assaulted her and shattered her future, so now she's determined to use that very silence to blacken his name with scandal.

Hugo knows it's up to him to "fix" this very real threat to the Duke's tempestuous marriage and his own dreams of success, but the more he interacts with Serena, the more he comes to love and admire her - and recognize the desperation of her own situation.

This is one of the stories that's a little difficult to review. BEA is so hectic and I was always putting this book down and picking it up again in so many different states of mind that I didn't really have a consistent reaction to it. The writing style is strong and lyrical, which I appreciated, and has an entertaining and complex heroine who, while practical, is not afraid to take a risk when her back is up against the wall. Unfortunately, I found Hugo to be a little two-dimensional. His motivations seemed pretty flat and standard (Make Money and Be a Man) and were pretty quickly changed as soon as he meets Serena.

While this wasn't an unpleasant read, it wasn't a particularly memorable one.
B-

The Third Angel, by Alice Hoffman (Three Rivers Press, 2008)

Alice Hoffman's books have been so consistently good to me that they've turned into emotional comfort reads - even if the way their characters' crises sometimes mirror my own makes them rather, uh, painful comfort reads.

The cleverness of The Third Angel's conceit lies in the fact that this novel can be read backwards and forwards, thanks to the interconnectedness of all three stories and heroines. Divided into three parts, the first part takes place in the 1990s and concerns Maddy, an embittered attorney visiting London to celebrate her sister Allie's wedding - while secretly pining for Allie's fiancé, Paul.

The second part of the novel revolves around Frieda, a girl in the 1960s who overcomes the pain of her parents' divorce by declining university to work as a hotel maid in London. There, she falls in love with a drug-addicted musician and discovers her own hidden penchant for song writing.

The third and final part takes us back to the 1950s, where 12-year-old Lucy is forced to accompany her father and new stepmother to London when she would much rather stay back in New York, read her novels, and grieve for her recently deceased mother. In spite of herself, she falls in love with London and winds up an accomplice to a secret affair between her stepmother's wild sister and her forbidden lover.

All three characters are connected - Lucy grows up to be Allie and Maddy's mother, and Frieda is the mother of Paul, Allie's fiancé. As each story brings us further back in time, the revelations in each story inform and give context to the tales that came before, making the novel extremely re-readable. Despite the rather unusual setting, the novel is still chockful of magical realism (symbolic herons and ghosts!), deeply romantic and complex female characters, and fantastic setting detail.
B+

"The Diviners," by Libba Bray

The Protagonist: Evie O'Neill. When misusing her secret psychic powers gets her exiled to live with her uncle in New York City, she sees it as a perfect opportunity to live the high life she's always dreamed of.
Her Angst: A killer is stalking the streets of Manhattan, and when Evie's curiosity gets the better of her, she learns there's more to this world than meets the eye.

The Other Protagonist: Memphis Campbell. As an errand-boy for a local crime boss, Memphis composes poetry in his spare time and tries to keep his family together as best he can.
His Angst: He used to have a magical ability to heal people - but it vanished after turning on him. Now his brother's showing signs of being psychic.

The Secondary Cast:

Will Fitzgerald: Evie's uncle, who owns a museum of supernatural oddities. Used to work for the government. Has a Shady Past.

Sam: A street thief with the mystical ability to avoid detection who allies himself with Will and Evie in hopes of tracking down his mother.

Mabel: Evie's friend and penpal, who is the mousy daughter of socialist revolutionaries.

Jericho: Will's loyal teenaged assistant. Shy and awkward, he takes a shine to Evie, oblivious to the fact that Mabel is crazy about him. However, there's more to him than meets the eye...

Theta: A chorus girl for the Ziegfield Follies. Possesses a dangerous and quite possibly fatal power that keeps her from making real connections with anyone - except Henry, her closest friend.

Henry: A young piano player and composer with the power of walking through dreams.

YA Angst Checklist:

• I Just Want to Drink But It's Illegal for Everyone
• Bobbing My Hair
• Bright Lights, Big City
• I Can't Believe I Have Magical Powers and My Life Still Sucks
• I Definitely Chose the Wrong Stockings for Raiding A Cemetery
• Interracial Relationships
• Rape
• Dead Siblings
• Religious Fanaticism
• The Spirit World

The Word: It's 1926, and 17-year-old Evie O'Neill is too big for her small town of Zenith, Ohio. Not only because of her outsize personality and conviction that she's made for flashbulbs and stardom, but also because of her unique ability to read a person's secrets and memories by holding an object of theirs. One night, after downing too much gin at a party, she unleashes her talent in an effort to impress people and winds up accusing the town golden boy of impregnating a chambermaid. When the boy's furious family threatens to sue the O'Neills for slander, Evie's exasperated parents ship her off to New York City to spend a few months with her reclusive uncle Will until the scandal dies down.

To Evie, it's the perfect punishment - escaping dull Ohio for the bright lights of NYC under the dubious supervision of an absentminded academic uncle? What could be better? At first, life is every bit as exciting as she imagined. She reconnects with her penpal, Mabel, meets Will's awkward teenage assistant, Jericho, and befriends Theta, a glamorous chorus girl who seems to know all the town's hottest spots. Sure, she has to work part-time at her uncle's failing Museum of the Supernatural (locally known as the Museum of Creepy Crawlies), but that's a pretty small fly in a pretty large jar of ointment.

On the other side of the city, Memphis, a young numbers runner for the local crime lord, tries to keep his family together even as his younger brother, Isaiah, starts exhibiting a talent for precognition and prophecy. Memphis, himself, used to have a paranormal talent for healing until it betrayed him in the worst of ways and he worries about Isaiah being dragged into that kind of pain.

But all is not well in New York City. A sinister figure known as Naughty John is stalking the streets, claiming very specific victims and leaving their bodies posed with supernatural symbols on them. The police come to Will for his paranormal expertise and Evie gets involved, too - discovering not only that her talent actually has a practical application outside of drunken party tricks, but that other people in New York have secret powers, too.

Libba Bray's The Diviners is a fiendishly entertaining and epic fantasy novel that manages a near-perfect balance between humour and horror. Bray creates a fascinating period piece peppered with gorgeous detail (cloche hats! Gin! Egg creams!) but doesn't do so at the expense of character development. Evie dashes to and fro with the flawlessly charming rat-a-tat delivery of a champagne-sozzled screwball comedienne, but beneath the firecracker dialogue churns the insecurities of an uncertain girl with relatable motivations that transcend her time period.

Despite its enormous length, the story speeds along at a frantic clip, fuelled by vibrant dialogue, an engaging mystery, and an enormous ensemble cast of teenage characters who all manage to contribute something necessary to the narrative. I gnawed through this addictive and thoroughly enjoyable doorstopper and never once felt the story slacken or encountered a plot device or character that felt unnecessary.

Also, despite the massive scope of The Diviners, Bray keeps most of the romance pretty low key. While two male characters are very obviously being moved into position to make up a love triangle in the next book (Sam and Jericho with Evie), all three characters remain independently developed and individually likeable. While there was a moment of Insta-Love between Memphis and Theta that bothered me (because Insta-Love bothers me on principle), it doesn't take up enough of the storyline to become a full-fledged annoyance.

The Diviners is an expertly-written, engaging, and creative historical YA paranormal that calls to mind Chicago, Supernatural, and even X-Men. While it may take a while to read (because it really is a massive tome), you'll enjoy yourself for every minute.
A+

"The Blessed," by Tonya Hurley

The Protagonists:

Agnes: Even though her suicide attempt fails, this naive Catholic schoolgirl still holds out hope that true love exists. But why is she drawn to this strange church during a hurricane?

Cecilia: An underground musician who's left to drown in a puddle and wakes up in the hospital with a strange new purpose. Just don't let her go near any open iron maidens, she's super clumsy. You can get stigmata from those things!

Lucy: A venomously awful and self-centred socialite who's made a living out of being famous for being famous - until she finds out who her real friends are when she accidentally overdoses at a club. Wait, no, I was wrong - she's venomously awful and self-centred throughout the book and spends most of the story trying to make everything about her.

The Secondary Cast:

Sebastian: The book's Hot Male Mentor and designated Catfight Lightning Rod, Sebastian escaped from a psych ward to find our three heroines and inform them of their destinies - in the slowest and vaguest way possible.

Dr. Frey: An eeeevil psychiatrist whose motivations and allegiances remain unclear for the entire book. His villainy's demonstrated by his desire to, uh, prescribe the proper treatment and medication for mental illness. Apparently treating mental disorders should be left up to Jesus. It says a lot about this book that his weapons of choice against our heroes are logic and medical reasoning. If logic is an enemy to your story, you need to look at your book, and look at your writing choices.

Angst Checklist:

• Help! I'm a Vicious Celebutard surrounded by other Vicious Celebutards!
• My Music Is Too Pretentious for Regular Clubs Therefore I'm Broke
• I Tried to Kill Myself for Attention but All I Got Was the Opposite of Attention
• Psychiatry is the Devil. Literally.
• Catholic Churches are losing ties to their roots, I mean where you can find a decent parish with a functional iron maiden anymore?
• Hot Abs for Jesus
• Sex dreams in which you die violently that are still hot
• Sex dreams only without the sex and lots of trippy imagery
• Sex dreams only with no sex and no dreams where you bash your head into mirrors, fall into iron maidens and set your hair on fire. Uh, the way Jesus intended.
• Heroism is for suckers, unless you do it in over-described fabulous wardrobes

Tweet It! My livetweets reading this hot mess are Storified here.

The Word: I spent about 4 hours figuring out how to write this review. How best to convey the utter disgust and rage I felt reading this terrible, offensive, insane-in-the-membrane book. I must have stopped and started a dozen times. Finally, I decided to keep it simple, and let the madness flow out of me naturally.

I was actually excited to read this book, if you can believe it. As a practising Catholic who is also writing a novel about saints for NaNoWriMo, I thought this book (which I picked up at BookExpo America) would provide the perfect creative inspiration.

I was wrong.

Our three "heroines" (and I use that term extremely loosely) all wind up in the ER on the same night after their Darwinian attempts to remove their defective genes from the YA Heroine gene pool failed - Agnes tried to kill herself to spite her mother and her ex-boyfriend, Cecilia the pretentious-preachy indie musician drunkenly drowned in a puddle, and professional famewhore Lucy accidentally overdosed at a club.

While convalescing, they each mysteriously receive a strange bone chaplet with a unique gold charm on it that draws them to a run-down church in Brooklyn.

Now, in a decently-written YA, this would start the plot going and lead these heroines on a journey to find out who they really are and what their purpose is. However, that would require writing and developing a female character deeper than the layer of dust this book will soon acquire at the Used Book Store. And why do that when it's so much easier to describe their designer outfits or the expensive furniture and accessories in their bedrooms?

To save on having to give the protagonists enough character development to motivate their own choices, the book has the heroines do things because they mysteriously "feel" that they should, or because a vague force compels them to make uncharacteristic decisions.

It's thanks to these inexplicable plot contrivances that our booze- and pretension-addled heroines wind up in a decrepit old church where a Hot Mysterious Male Mentor Figure named Sebastian awaits. Because he is a Male Person with Abs, it takes about five minutes before all three of our heroines are venomously catfighting for his attentions.

And that's pretty much the book. All these girls do is snipe at each other, fawn over Sebastian, and find new and Catholic-inspired ways to hurt themselves.

No, really. The Blessed is aggressively, offensively stupid for a number of reasons - the vapid and unpleasant heroines, the grotesque random violence, the wonky plotting, the overly-vague and half-assed world building, and the amateurish writing larded with unnecessary adjectives and speech tags.

Worse, The Blessed fails because nothing of note really happens for the vast majority of it. Sebastian waves his arms around and makes a lot of open-ended and non-specific statements about finding a destiny, and it takes him until nearly the very end of the book to reveal what the cover artwork, book marketing, and back cover blurb already did: that the heroines are the reincarnations of the Saints Agnes, Cecilia, and Lucy.

So for the first 300 pages of this book there is no conflict, there is no explanation, there isn't even any development of the very, very slight supernatural plot.

For 300 pages, we have to read about how three hateful girls fight over a man, slutshame each other, and brutally self-harm themselves during a Random Religious Ecstasy (not making this up) in a church during a hurricane without any real reason for why they're there and why we have to read about it.

Even by the end, the worldbuilding is laughably threadbare - Agnes, Cecilia and Lucy have to save the world by doing, uh, good stuff, and by fighting the evil people who are hunting them, er, because they're just evil. What, were you reading this book hoping to learn something?

Plus, if one of the girls dies, the whole world is screwed. Because it's not like there are literally hundreds of other saints waiting in the wings. Or, you know, Jesus. He's usually on hand for these world-ending events. Unless, of course, the author just pilfered random bits of Catholicism without grounding it in any sort of internal logic or actual research. Gee, wouldn't that be offensive?

Honestly, The Blessed is just a heinous mess of random unpleasantness strung together with pseudo-Catholic-hipster pretension. It's ugly and convoluted and disorganized and violent and pointless. It portrays girls as glitzy objects of ridicule who are destined to be brutally victimized. The narrative has no established purpose until the very end and even then it cannot conclude it.

I suffered this book so that hundreds of thousands of you could be spared. Don't let my miraculous sacrifice be in vain.

Avoid this book, in memory of me.
F

Anthology Review: "Zombies Vs. Unicorns"

The eternal question - zombies or unicorns.

Actually, it's not so much an eternal question as one that can be answered fairly quickly - unicorns.

Unicorns. Peter S. Beagle owns. Zombies are also gross and I'm not generally interested in their stories. 'Nuff said.

Unicorns.

But I'd received a number of suggestions to read this anthology after I read both a zombie and a unicorn romance, only for both to suck various decaying/sparkly nether regions.

The anthology is edited by Holly Black (team unicorn) and Justine Larbalestier (team zombie) and was built on the premise of WELL WHY THE HELL NOT? They then proceeded to rope in a flock of supremely talented YA authors to contribute interesting stories for one or the other supernatural creature (and in one case, both).

My reactions are as follows:

"The Highest Justice," by Garth Nix (a.k.a. "The One With Both a Unicorn and a Zombie In It")
The Plot: A princess calls upon the legendary unicorn protector of her kingdom to avenge the murder of her mother, with unpredictable results.
The Word: This was a nice enough entry into the anthology - well-written, with a genuine creep factor (the zombified remains of the princess' mother factor into the revenge). However, it seemed a little too low-conflict for me, as the unicorn promptly and quickly solves all the princess' problems as they arise, with little to no effort required on the princess' part. B

"Love Will Tear Us Apart," by Alaya Dawn Johnson (a.k.a. "The One with the Gay Indierock Zombie")
The Plot: A high-functioning zombie teenager falls in love with a troubled zombie hunter with similar taste in music - but will the Eaten People in his past destroy their budding relationship before it even begins?
The Word: This was a fantastic story - firstly, because we get a zombie's point of view. Secondly, because thanks to a well-developed premise, our zombie is still capable of cutting and hilarious commentary (even if the virus ate away the part of his brain that tells him killing people is wrong). The story is tense and enjoyable, even if the violence at the end seemed a shade too over-the-top. A

"Purity Test," by Naomi Novik (a.k.a. "The One With the Unicorns In Manhattan")
The Plot: A homeless teenage girl in New York City is recruited by an unprepared unicorn to help him save a herd of baby unicorns captured by an evil wizard.
The Word: I loves me some Naomi Novik, and I never even knew she wrote YA! This story is pretty fluffy, but it's saved by the practical human heroine and her hilarious dialogue with Belcazar, the unicorn who wouldn't know a virgin if it bit him on the butt. A witty send-up of fantasy tropes set in modern Manhattan. B+

"Bougainvillea," by Carrie Ryan (a.k.a. "The One with the Zombie Pirates")
The Plot: In a world destroyed by zombies, our heroine is the daughter of a governor who's managed to keep their tropical island self-sufficient and zombie-free thanks to his strict rule - but at what price?
The Word: I've never read Carrie Ryan before - I skimmed over glowing reviews of her books (like The Forest of Hands and Teeth) because I was never that interested in zombie stories. I'm not a big fan of horror or dystopias - I'll read them, but I've never been interested enough to seek them out. I might have to change that - "Bougainvillea" is one of the best stories in this collection, a subtle, complex, layered tale that flashes back and forth in time as our heroine, Iza, reflects on how her father's quick-thinking reaction to the zombie apocalypse saved a number of lives - but also irreparably damaged his family and changed him into a man she no longer recognizes. A+

"A Thousand Flowers," by Margo Lanagan (a.k.a. "The Unicorn Story That Redefines the Definition of Horny")
The Plot: A hapless young man finds a unicorn in the woods who leads him to the unconscious body of a ravished princess, and he's then blamed for her rape. Later, the princess's midwife/jailer realizes the case wasn't as cut-and-dry as it seemed.
The Word: This story totally sucked me in with its gorgeous, poetical language and beautifully weird plot (as Lanagan demonstrated in the short story "Singing My Sister Down," she's aces at Gorgeous Language and the Beautifully Weird). The plot twist is fairly obvious (and also totally spoiled in the editors' foreword), but the story is clearly meant to be enjoyed for its marvellous description and uncanny, magical setting. A gem. A+

"The Children of the Revolution," by Maureen Johnson. (a.k.a. "The One with the ZomBabies")
The Plot: A stranded American teenager in Britain is hired by a Famous Unnamed Celebrity to babysit her flock of adopted children for a night, provided she abides by very specific childrearing instructions. Ha, that'll work.
The Word: Maureen Johnson is an author I'm more familiar with from Twitter than from reading her books, so I was eager to try this one. Ignore the fact that it uses the age-old Protagonist is Doomed By Defying Basic Instructions plot - "Children'''s real charm comes from the zany humour and sharp satire of celebrity eccentricity - where this time, a celebrity's gonzo cult religion and odd life choices have terrifying, and terrifyingly funny, connotations. A

"The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn," by Diana Peterfreund (a.k.a. "The One with Unicolts")
The Plot: A devout Christian girl with a hidden gift for attracting and hunting unicorns (which in this universe are violent and man-eating), rescues a baby unicorn from drowning and starts taking care of it, against her better instincts. This causes her to question whether unicorns are really evil and if they can be tamed.
The Word: This story left me feeling I should have read Peterfreund's books first (she has a series about killer unicorns, Rampant and Ascendant), and not in the good way. The heroine keeps referencing "what happened last fall" every other page (a mysterious event that resulted in both her first kiss and the deaths of her cousins), and the ending is completely open ended. I felt like this was a prologue to something and it does not work very well as a standalone for those unfamiliar with her work. C+

"Inoculata," by Scott Westerfeld. (a.k.a. "The One with Half-Zombies")
The Plot: Our heroine, along with various children and a few adults, have spent the last 4 years since the Zombie Apocalypse living within a fenced-in farming compound, eating crops and canned food while zombies groan behind the fence day and night. When she discovers a way to inoculate oneself against the infection, but at a steep price, she has to decide between risk and freedom, or safety and stagnation.
The Word: This had an interesting but not-entirely-developed plot, but that may just have been due to the story's length. I enjoyed the theme of freedom but at the cost of one's humanity, but I felt the characters made their decisions very cavalierly and there weren't really any real consequences for that choice. B

"Princess Prettypants," by Meg Cabot (a.k.a. "The One where Unicorns Fart Rainbows")
The Plot: Our heroine gets a unicorn for her birthday and uses it to get revenge for herself and her classmates.
The Word: I've never read Meg Cabot before, but I don't think I'm missing anything. The weakest story in the collection, the story is a shallow construction of first world problems and sitcom stereotypes - the most heinous of which is the heroine's Homeschooled Sidekick who is of course Super-Christian, super naive, and unable to dress herself. After reading the gripping and profound stories that came before, I thought Cabot's story seemed ridiculously superficial and lame - like an episode of Saved By the Bell that accidentally popped up in my DVR next to episodes of Game of Thrones and Call the Midwife. D

"Cold Hands," by Cassandra Clare (a.k.a. "The One With The ZomBoyfriend")
The Plot: In a town where the dead are prone to coming back to life, our heroine uses this curse to her advantage when her boyfriend is murdered by his uncle.
The Word: I liked the setting in this book (which was contemporary but with a feudal political system of dukes and princes and such), and how the zombies had come to be accepted (or not) in the town's community. That being said, the plot itself seemed a little abrupt and oversimplified - but the ending does leave one with a nice little chill. B

"The Third Virgin," by Kathleen Duey (a.k.a. "The One With the Life-Sucking Unicorn")
The Plot: An immortal unicorn whose horn has healing properties spends centuries searching for true virgins - the only people who are capable of communicating with him. When he becomes addicted to the darker side of his powers, he hopes the next virgin he finds will be able to do what he can't - end his life.
The Word: This was an odd, dark little tale. The unicorn is such a desperately lonely figure, who's only capable of communicating with a very rare type of individual. He spends most of his life searching for one, but as he succumbs to his hungers (saving life gives him a high, but taking one gets him a stronger one), he wonders if he's worthy of companionship or compassion anymore. I liked this take on it, even if the ending is a little unclear. B+

"Prom Night," by Libba Bray (a.k.a. "The One with Mum and Dad Zombies")
The Plot: The teenage heroine is a cop (and a Zoroastrian!) in a broken-down society run entirely by children and teenagers - after the adults (who were the most susceptible to the zombie virus) were driven out.
The Word: This beautiful and hauntingly sad tale was surprisingly moving - especially considering there's only one zombie depicted in the entire story and he's quickly dispatched. The story is subtly and movingly told, of teenagers playing adult roles in an attempt to pretend the world isn't broken, while at the same time trying to hold tight to some of the traditions of adolescence while they're still able to celebrate them (like the town-organized Prom Night). A

Altogether, the grades are B, A, B+, A+, A+, A, C+, B,  D, B, B+, A. All in all, Zombies Vs. Unicorns is an excellent anthology with a wide variety of stories and protagonists.

And ... honestly ... the zombie stories got most of the highest grades. I never really pegged myself as an end-of-the-world person. I like dark stories, but I do prefer happy (or at least stable) endings, and I never thought I'd get them with zombie stories. Who knew? That being said, most of the unicorn stories held up as well.

If you're a fan of supernatural stories and desire an introduction to a whole slew of incredibly talented authors, do give Zombies vs. Unicorns a try.
A-

You can purchase Zombies vs. Unicorns here.

"Wake," by Amanda Hocking

The Protagonists: Gemma and Harper. Harper is the overprotective older sister who's spent nine years raising Gemma after their mother was incapacitated by a car accident. Gemma just wants to swim and be a regular girl dating regular guys without her sister breathing down her neck.
Their Angsts: Three creepy, possibly-supernatural girls want to add Gemma to their special circle of BFFs - whether she wants to or not.

The Secondary Cast:

Brian: Gemma and Harper's dockworker dad. Does a good enough job, but hasn't gone out and socialized since his wife's head injury.

Alex: Harper's friend, and Gemma's crush. May also have a thing for Gemma.

Daniel: A hot twenty-year-old who does odd jobs around town and lives in a tiny houseboat. Harper hatelikes him because he's hot and jobless.

Thea: One of the Three Girls -  the Reluctant Redheaded One.

Lexi: One of the Three Girls - the Bubbly Blond One.

Penn: Leader of the Three Girls - the Bitchy Brunette One.

Marcy: Harper's unpleasant and venomous coworker at the local library.

Angst Checklist:

• Absent Parents
• Friends to Lovers
• Attractive, Confident Women in Groups Are Scary
• You're a Scruffy Loser and I Openly Judge You But Damn If You're Still Not Sexy
• Do Boys Really Care, Or Is It Okay To Eat Them?
• Sister-Sister Relationships
• Responsibility vs. Living Life to the Fullest

The Word: Gemma and Harper are sisters who live in the picturesque seaside town of Capri. Gemma is a talented swimmer with Olympic aspirations and a serious crush on Harper's geeky friend Alex - however, she seriously chafes under Harper's repressive replacement-parenting. Ever since their mother was mentally handicapped by a car accident and their grief-stricken father decided parenthood was a part-time gig, Harper's taken over and turned Shrill Overreacting Mothering into a science.

And then there are the girls: Thea, Lexi, and Penn, three mysterious, preternaturally gorgeous and confident girls who have suddenly moved to Capri. Everyone assumes they're tourists, but because they're extremely forward and unbearably pretty, everyone in town either hates or is afraid of them. When they start following Gemma around and inviting her to swim with them in the bay, both Gemma and Harper are extremely Weirded Out but the three girls won't be denied - they'll make Gemma one of them by hook or by crook.

I'll be blunt and say this novel supremely disappointed me, and I didn't have the highest hopes in it to begin with. This was a book I picked up at BEA thanks to the gorgeous cover, but the story inside is shoddily constructed out of cliches, flat characters, hamfisted writing, and troubling messages. I don't even know why I'm spoilering this, but the Three Girls are sirens. Really, really, obviously sirens. The book makes no attempt at suspense or surprise or development. Instead of giving us any spooky build-up as to why the Three Girls are eery and off-putting, the story simply gives us a bloody prologue that tells us right at the start that the Three Girls find boys Magically Delicious. No surprise. No discovery.

However, everything about this book is hammered over the head with the author's Tell Over Show writing style. There's no description, there's no opportunity for the reader to explore and interpret what's going on in the story - it's just plunked down in front of us like a day-old fish, whether it fits with the character's POV or not.

As well, all the characters and their relationships are so predictable and moth-eaten. Harper is the Girl Who Can't Have Fun, who spars with Daniel, The Slacker Boy With Hidden Depths - so naturally they fall for each other. Gemma's crush Alex is the Geeky Nerd - but of course, despite being on no teams and not exercising, he's still got fantastic muscles! Most disappointingly, the Three Girls are superficially-depicted almost to the point of parody.

I will grant this book points - Daniel and Alex are both very nice, respectful boys, with no jerkiness or stalkery behaviour written off as "boys will be boys." I also appreciated the gender-reversed dynamic of Gemma and Alex's relationship - in this paranormal YA, the boy is the sweet-natured, innocent human who's snooped at through his bedroom window and the girl is the man-eating creature who craves love more than human flesh (at least for now).

However, so much of this story is left open-ended - it has all the structure of a leaking bag of flour. There is no build-up, there is no resolution, there is no climax excepting a half-hearted, last-minute confrontation at the end that goes nowhere. I had a similar problem with The Vicious Deep - I've noticed recently that a lot of first novels set in prospective series don't have a conclusion or answer any questions because they're so bent on saving the interesting stuff for later books.  

Every novel, regardless of its series order, requires a problem and a resolution. It's basic storytelling, and a series strong enough to stretch out over several novels should have more than one major problem or obstacle behind it, anyway. I might suggest the author read The Hunger Games trilogy (which, for all its faults, knew how to resolve a storyline while leaving an opening for future books) or some classic high fantasy trilogies.

Finally, my last problem was with the themes behind the depictions of the Three Girls. Thanks to an over-explainy prologue, the reader knows the Three Girls are up to no good, but the way the other characters justified their suspicion and hostility towards them was troubling. The Three Girls are depicted as off-putting and terrifying, to the point where people will cross the street to avoid them - and why? Because they're too pretty (and wear revealing clothing). They're too confident. And they travel in packs. To be fair, they do eat people, but I kept asking myself, why is their beauty, their confidence, and their friendship depicted as a threat? Why are we expected to fear pretty, confident girls who stick together?

The book skirts the line with this theme, with off-the-cuff scenes like one where Harper ruminates on how she doesn't have prejudices against anyone, even pretty girls, and I wanted to ask, "why EVEN? Why should pretty girls EVER be subjected to prejudice?" And there's another awful scene where Harper's venomous female coworker out-of-the-blue insults the Three Girls by accusing them of being bulimic. Because they're so hot, you see - and that's somehow offensive. If this was an attempt at satire, it's a poor one (and Jennifer's Body did it a bajillion times better), and comes perilously close to body- and slut-shaming.

All in all, Wake is a novel to avoid. If man-eating hot girls is your bag, I'd recommend the far superior and snarkily clever Jennifer's Body instead.
D+

Still interested? Wake comes out August 7th. You can preorder here.

"Darkfever," by Karen Marie Moning

The Chick: MacKayla "Mac" Lane. A bubbly, blond Georgia bartender who goes to Ireland to find out how her sister died while studying abroad.
The Rub: Once there, she discovers the answers are weirder than she thinks - her sister might have been able to see the magical sidhe that have begun infesting Dublin's darker neighbourhoods. And now Mac can see them, too.
Dream Casting: Revenge's Emily VanCamp, slightly dumber.


The Dude: Jericho Barrons. Asshole extraordinaire and all-round waste of character development and fictional oxygen. Has a bookstore, lots of money, and a dark, mysterious past.
The Rub: TOO BAD HE'S A COMPLETE JACKASS.
Dream Casting: Keanu Reeves.


Urban Fantasy Convention Checklist:

• 1 Inconveniently Dead Relative
• 1 Untested, Just-Discovered Magical Power that Is Way More Magical Than Regular Magical Powers
• Several Ugly Fairies
• 1 Intentionally Stereotypical Vampire
• 1 Magical Spear
• NO Magical Power Training Montages (for SHAME!)

The Word: Thanks to lovely Commenter Suggestions, I Storify'd my LiveTweets here. 

I came across this book at my second RWA - it came in a lovely package that included a free book and a soundtrack. And several friends of mine enjoyed the book. Sadly, I did not.

MacKayla is a sweet-natured Georgia peach chilling by the pool when she receives a phone call on her parents' landline that informs her that her beloved sister Alina, who had been studying abroad in Ireland, has been murdered. MacKayla is further shocked when she replaces her old phone (which she'd dropped in the pool a few days prior to Alina's murder) and finds a host of confusing, frantic voicemails from her sister about how the world's in danger and they have to find something called the Shi-shadu.

Against her protective parents' wishes, MacKayla flies to Ireland, determined to find Alina's killer. Unsurprisingly, this goes nowhere, and soon MacKayla finds herself having creepy visions - where beautiful people suddenly appear ugly and inhuman.

Her quest for justice eventually brings her to Barrons Books and Baubles - a mysterious bookstore run by a particularly nasty individual masquerading as a hero, Jericho Barrons. He's violent, callous, manipulative, misogynist, and cruel - but hey! He's hot! So that makes everything okay.

He identifies MacKayla as a sidhe-seer, a rare human capable of seeing through a fairy's glamour. This puts MacKayla in more danger, since fairies take serious umbrage with buzz-killing humans who can warn people of their tricks. As a bonus, MacKayla's new power also extends into detecting magical objects, which Barrons hopes can prove useful in finding the Sinsar Dubh, a powerful spellbook and the same thing Alina warned MacKayla about in her last voicemail message.

MacKayla responds to this exposition with a violent denial and flees, nearly killing herself several times in a whirlwind of Too Stupid To Live decisions.

Once she's tired herself out Almost Getting Killed For a Really Stupid Reason, she returns to Barrons, who promptly holds her hostage and drags her (all but on a leash) to the homes of various Shady Paranormal Criminals in order to see if she can detect if they're hiding the Sinsar Dubh.

I really just did not like the protagonists of this novel at all. MacKayla, in particular, is a borderline-infantalized character - an immature, thoughtless girl who goes out investigating the paranormal in overly-described "cute" outfits, spouting "cute" swearwords (she says "petunia" instead of ass) and "cute" Southern wisdom - only to get into not-so-cute scrapes.

I get that Moning was trying to write Mac as a bit of a departure from the standard UF heroines (who tend to be described by most or all of these words: hardbitten, bad ass, no friends, leather jacket, dress in black, foster kid past, sullen demeanour). However, in this novel, Mac just came across as shallow and frequently TSTL. There's nothing inherently stupid about liking fashion or make up or blond hair - but there is if that's what you think about first when you're in mortal danger, to the detriment of your personal safety.

As for Barrons, I don't want to dwell on him too much because, frankly, he's a terribly written character. He controls and harasses the helpless and hapless Mac for much of the novel, often violently, with no discernible character traits or motivations beyond Whatevah, Whatevah, I Get What I Want.

I understand the whole "anti-hero" attraction, but in such cases, the author usually gives the character understandable flaws, background, and actions to humanize them, so that our understanding of them as a person helps us like them despite their flaws. Barrons remains completely opaque - in saving his actual motivations, heritage, and backstory to try and get people to read future books, the author left too little actual development in this book to make him anywhere near appealing enough for me to care about how he does in future books.

As for the writing, the author employs a very irritating Future-Narrator technique. Darkfever is told in the first person by Mac - but by a Mac in the future who already knows everything that's going to happen. In an increasingly-frustrating habit, the Future-Narrator will drop irritatingly obvious hints, often giving away the ending of a scene before the scene even starts:

[Barrons] "I'd rather you screw up while I'm with you, so I can manage the situation, than have you attempt your first kill on your own and get yourself killed instead." I had no idea how prophetic his word would prove (p.259).

Or:

In retrospect, I'm still stunned that I went into the abandoned neighborhood alone that day. It's a wonder I survived. [This is written BEFORE SHE GOES INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD] (p.298).

Wow, way to completely suck the suspense out of a scene. Way to make the writing even more hamfisted. Because Heaven knows we wouldn't be able to figure it out on our own just by reading the damn scene!

Or else she will hint at something that is not explained or doesn't happen in this book:

Something nagged at me, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was a thing that I would stupidly fail to put my finger on until it was too late. Before long, I would understand that nothing had been what it seemed that night, and the reason Barrons had faced-off so coolly with the blood-sucking Master was because he'd gone in with the quiet assurance that, no matter what, he would walk out alive, and not because he had Malluce [the vampire] by the proverbial fiscal balls. (p.155-156)

Or how about:

One day I would stop taking off my clothes in V'lane's [hot fairy prince who induces uncontrollable horniness] presence, but the cost of that resistance would be a piece of my soul. Today, here and now, strolling through the National Museum of Archaeology and History ... I had no idea that pieces of one's soul could be lost.

I have honestly no idea what these excerpts mean, because they're not explained in this book - clearly, they're meant to hint at future books. It's simply confusing and annoying. It's understandable for some sequel-baiting to occur in the first book of an intended series, but the best type of sequel-baiting is to write a coherent and creative first book. If the first book isn't good, I don't care how many "secrets and answers" you promise me will be in later books. And if your first book spends more time hinting at cool stuff to come then writing an understandable and cool story happening right now, then you've failed.

And in that scene, Darkfever fails, because not only does it sequel-bait like it's going out of style, but there's no solid conclusion to the book at hand. Do we find out who Barrons is? Nope. Do we find out, definitively, who Alina's killer is? Nope. Do we find out Mac's true heritage? NOPE. None of the plot threads started in this book have a conclusion. I finished this book with almost no answers at all. I'm sorry, but even a first book in a series is still a book. A story. And stories require a beginning, a middle, and an end. Concluding the initial plot doesn't mean you can't continue into the next book with new plots that cropped up along the way, but every book needs a payoff.

I'm sorry, but I did not enjoy Darkfever, on any level. I'm off to go read books that live in the now.

D+

Disagree? Purchase Darkfever here.

"Dark Lover," by J.R. Ward

The Chick: Beth Randall. When a strange, dark, leather-clad man breaks into her apartment, the last thing she expects is to have hot monkey sex with him.
The Rub: Maybe the second last - she also discovers he has pointy teeth and five hot vampire brothers!
Dream Casting: Liv Tyler.

The Dude: Wrath, King of the Vampires. To honour his promise to a deceased friend, he seeks out his friend's half-vampire daughter to ease her through her coming transformation.
The Rub: He gets all warm and tingly around her - but his angst! If he settles down, he might actually have to take on all those responsibilities he's been shirking for centuries!
Dream Casting: Eric Bana.

The Plot:

Wrath: Surprise! You're going to be a vampire!

Beth: WTF! GET OUT OF MY APARTMENT!

Wrath: But I'm a sexy, angsty pain-filled vampire!

Beth: ...go on.

Wrath: And I have five brothers who are just as angsty as me!

Rhage: I bring the sex appeal!

Phury: I'll do your hair!

Zsadist: You'll want to fix me!

Tohrment: I'm full of pre-emptive angst because my hot wife is still alive!

Vishous: I bring homoerotic subtext!

Butch, Beth's Friend: What a coincidence! So do I!

Vishous: YAY! LET'S BE PLATONIC MAN-FRIENDS!

Butch: I CAN'T WAIT TO NOT MAKE OUT WITH YOU!

Wrath: OMG YOU GUYS THIS IS MY FREAKIN' NOVEL, GO AND BE NOT-GAY SOMEWHERE ELSE!

Vishous and Butch: *skipping away happily* ~*let's talk about baseball...*~

Beth: You were saying?

Wrath: Let's get hitched!

Beth: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist
6 Orders of Piping-Hot Vampire Angst

1 Order of Piping-Hot Cop Angst

1 Pair of Wrap-Around Shades
1 Evil Karate Dojo

2 Accidental Cases of Forgot-the-Condom

1 Magical Transformation

1 Magical Aphrodisiac Vampire Doobie

1 Abused Ex-Wife

1 Secondary Romance between Abused Ex-Wife and Angsty Cop

1 Secondary Homoerotic Bromance between Angsty Cop and Hacker Vampire

The Word: I really must give J.R. Ward her due.

She has crafted one of the most enjoyably silly and spot-on parodies of vampire romances that I have ever read. It plays so close to the line that it can be read like the real thing, if that's your bag, but it's overlaid with just the right amount of cheese and exaggeration that people who are not normally fans of vampire paranormals (like me) are totally in on the joke.

The whole novel plays like a dark, twisted vampire parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - where a woman on the run is essentially adopted by a DudeGroup of inbred cannibal vampires who name themselves after incorrectly-spelled negative attributes.

Let me explain - this particular DudeGroup is the Black Dagger Brotherhood, a secret society of vampire warriors dedicated to protecting the slightly-less-secret society of vampire civilians.

The members of the Brotherhood are neatly introduced with all the pride and specificity of a new line of action figures. Each one comes with his own angst! Romantic Soulmate sold separately!

Wrath: He's the leader of the BDB, and the official King of the Vampires - presumably because he was the only one smart enough to spell his name correctly. However, he is visually impaired, so maybe someone else with a better grasp of English wrote it on his nametag for him. Likes: Black satin sheets, leather, ninja stars. Dislikes: Bright lights. Responsibility. His angst: He's been slacking off on the ol' Royal duties for 300 years because of his low self-esteem.

Vishous: The Hacker Vampire. Sports a goatee and a Mike Tyson-esque face tattoo. Casting: A sleazy Chris Evans. Likes: The Red Sox, hot cops named Butch, things he can do with his right hand. Dislikes: The Yankees, things he can do with his left hand. His Angst: A magical Left Hand of Doom that he must keep gloved.

Rhage: The Hot Vampire - nicknamed "Hollywood." Described as a "sex legend." I suppose the name Hhumble was taken. Casting: Chris Hemsworth. Likes: Killing. Sex. Ladies. Not at the same time. Dislikes: Anything that does not involve killing, sex, and/or ladies. His Angst: Cursed to turn into a dragon when he's enRhaged.

Phury: The Fabulous Hair Vampire. Casting: Michael Bolton, circa 1991. Likes: Vidal Sassoon, Moroccan Oil, his twin brother Zsadist. Dislikes: Split ends, scrunchies, everything his twin brother Zsadist actually does. His Angst: Vow of celibacy! Woe!

Zsadist: The "tortured" one, he is clearly the A.J. of the Backstreet Dagger Boys Brotherhood. Casting: Vin Diesel. Likes: Pain. Darkness. Terrorizing, torturing and possibly murdering women. Hitting that high F in "Defying Gravity" from the Wicked soundtrack. Dislikes: Women. Everything else, too - but especially women. His Angst: He was, um, literally tortured since infancy and is covered in scars.

Tohrment: The well-adjusted one! Nice, reasonable, easy on the eyes. His wife is awesome. Casting: Brian Austin Green. Likes: Rational arguments, and his wife Wellsie. Dislikes: Being called pussy-whipped. His Angst: Having a fabulous hot wife with a baby on the way more or less paints a Bull's-Eye for Fate on his ass - is he only two days away from retirement, too?

Darius: The Dead One. Bites it with a car bomb.

The whole group dynamic is a sharp riff off the Manly-Man-Pain stereotypes that tend to proliferate in DudeGroup romance series. There is absolutely no reason given for the ridiculous names that no other vampire has - and it can hardly be a coincidence that the one Brother in the Hood with a comparatively normal name is bumped off in the first chapter. They're all more or less Angst Archtypes hyped to 11 - Zsadist, in particular, takes the Done-Wrong-By-One-Woman-Therefore-ALL-Women-Are-The-Same trope so far he makes the average Judith McNaught hero look like a petticoated lesbian suffragette.

But beneath all the sweaty, angsty leather-coated muscle, there is a narrative! Before he's blasted to the Ann Rice Novel in the Sky, Darius (or Uhnlucky, as I like to call him) reveals to Wrath that he sired a daughter on a human woman 25 years ago. Thanks to her half-vampire heritage, she's due to undergo Fang Puberty very soon, and he asks Wrath to help her survive the transition with his pure vampire blood. Wrath, who has spent 300 years turning Commitment-Dodging into a science, refuses - but he feels differently after he's forced to collect his brother's remains with a dust buster.

Enter Beth, a perpetually sexually-harassed newspaper reporter. She's tasked with investigating a car bomb that went off outside a nightclub, but she's understandably distracted as she only barely escaped full-on sexual assault mere hours before. She's initially too shaken up to open up to Detective Brian "Butch" O'Neal, a human cop with Vampire-Sized Angst who is an acquaintance of hers - and Wrath certainly doesn't help when he pulls an Edward Cullen and gets caught sneaking into her apartment to see Darius' half-breed daughter for himself.

Forced to psychically sedate her and erase her memories, Wrath tries to Groundhog Day her and breaks into her apartment again, this time smoking a blunt of what I can only surmise is Secret Vampire Weed, which is intended to relax her into listening to reason. Unfortunately, it makes her uncontrollably horny instead - a common side effect in romance! - and they end up Doing It. Whoopsie!

It's not long before Beth's eyes are forcibly opened to the secrets of vampire society - as are Butch's, when he follows her because he suspects the enormous, tattooed, pierced, leather-clad, heavily armed men she now hangs out with are up to no good. Butch is easily the best part of the novel - he's nicely self-deprecating and the one male character who can communicate with a female character without dragging his knuckles across the floor and beating his chest. He's a little hyper-masculinized, too (his suspension from the force for police brutality is completely deserved!), but he makes up for it with his immediate bromance with fellow Sox fan Vishous, a pairing that generates enough homoerotic tension to fuel an armada of Disney cruise ships.

The Brotherhood, meanwhile, are opposed by an evil anti-vampire group with the wimpiest of possible names: the Lessening Society. Watch out! They're going to lessen you! They're not going to eradicate you, but they'll shave a little off the top! Enough so that you'll notice! Oh no!

But no, I'm being too harsh - the society is actually comprised of albino baby-powder-scented eunuchs. But threatening albino baby-powder-scented eunuchs! Ward very cleverly gives the villains attributes that are directly and exaggeratedly opposite of the descriptors stereotypically given to romantic heroes (who are typically dark-complexioned, musky-scented, and virile). Since there is no actual world-building reason given for why they smell like Johnson & Johnson, it seems apparent to me that this is a comedic choice for parody purposes.

As funny as they are, however, the Lessening Society serves more as a looming threat than an actual one. They seem to be trapped in the world of '80s films since their evil plans consist of recruiting boys into evil martial arts dojos. Most of the major baddie's (Mr. X) story arc involves him serving as an evil Mr. Miyagi to a young recruit, as he teaches him how to metaphorically wax on and off with paranormal villainy.

There is also a subplot with a Mad Vampire Scientist that is a little Jekyll and Hyde and a lot pointless.

When it all comes down to it, I suppose I am making a conscious choice to see this novel as a parody, because if it isn't, it really is a rather subpar paranormal. The worldbuilding is hit or miss - Wrath states that vampires feed on the blood of other vampires, not humans, and yet Zsadist frequently does and Mr. X catches vampires by attracting them with human blood. I also get iffy feminist vibes from the vampire culture's restrictive "protectiveness" towards the females of the species - why are there no Black Dagger sisters? I mean COME ON, no Bhitchy?

It's also easier to tolerate the Brothers' attitude towards violence and collateral damage when it's viewed through the lens of parody. Without it, the Brothers appear cruel, callous and bigoted (even Tohrment has a questionable scene where he threatens to rape Butch's significant other). And Wrath essentially abandons the wife he neglected and abused for centuries to the point where she's a shell of a person, for another woman and we're supposed to cheer and clap. If I didn't look at this novel as a take off of cliches that I despise, than I'd just plain despise it.

Honestly, I'm still pretty much immune to the Black Dagger Brotherhood's charms (in particular, Zsadist sounds so horrible and terrifying that I can't imagine how Ward would do his novel without retroactively neutering him first), but there are a host of other reviewers who are fans of the series, so if you're serious about giving this one a try, I would try searching for their reviews. In fact, if you are a fan of the series, do leave a comment below - and even drop a link to your own reviews!

As a Parody:
B

As a Serious Vampire Novel:
C-

Purchase Dark Lover here.

"Tiger Eye," by Marjorie Liu

The Chick: Delilah "Dela" Reese. A skilled metalsmith vacationing in Beijing, she is talked into buying a mysterious riddlebox at a local market by a mysterious old woman.
The Rub: The box releases a powerful warrior cursed to serve her every whim, but can he protect her from assailants who also want the box - or who have a personal vendetta against Dela herself?
Dream Casting: A younger Gwyneth Paltrow.

The Dude: Hari. A tiger shapeshifter cursed into eternal servitude by an evil Magi, he is bound to Dela until the end of her days, regardless of either of their wishes.
The Rub: While Dela is kind to him, his experience tells him it's only a matter of time before the temptation to command him grows too great.
Dream Casting: A younger Keanu Reeves with flashy highlights.

The Plot:

Wise Old Chinese Woman: Buy this mysterious box!

Dela: Sure! What could possibly go wrong?

Hari: *poof!*

Dela: SWEET!

Hari: I am cursed to serve you hand and foot, shall I commence sexual stimulation while wearing an expression of total and profound disgust?

Dela: Wow, not so sweet.

Assassin: Die, oh tiny blond one!

Hari: Here, I'll defend you!

Dela: Oh no, let me defend you! For as a seven foot tall trained warrior with 2000 years of experience, you are far more susceptible to pain and injury than an unarmed blonde woman!

Hari: After 2000 years of torment, your insane and unreasonable Mary Sue Martyr tendencies are strangely appealing!

Dela: Let's get out of China!

In America...

Three Hot Sequel Baits: Hey Dela! Let us protect and cherish you, in a totally platonic and angsty way!

Hari: I am totally cool with this - they are clearly destined for future novels.

Dela: SWEET!

Hot Sequel Baits: Someone's trying to kill you - because someone used one of your artsy knives to kill a child!

Dela: WHAT?! Someone used a SHARP METAL BLADE that I fashioned into an item EXPRESSLY DESIGNED FOR CUTTING AND STABBING THINGS to do just THAT? My world is falling apart!

Antagonist #1: *kills self*

Hari: Well that was easy!

Antagonist #2: *gets eaten*

Dela: Yay! More time for love scenes!

Antagonist #3: Despite having no build up or true motivations and only sporadic appearances throughout the novel, it turns out I'm your big bad! Watch as I tell instead of show you what happened to me because I'm obviously just a narrative plot device whose motivations remain pretty sketchy!

Dela: *kills herself, thereby killing villain, achieving Martyrdom Singularity*

Hari: Good thing I have Last Minute Never Explained Resurrection Powers!

Dela: *revived* HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

1 McGuffin Curse

2 Suspense Subplots

1 Fiddler BFF

3 Shapeshifters

1 Evil Magi

2 Dead Gang Leaders

1 Use of The "Love Fixes Everything" Cure-All

3 Pieces of Hot, Angsty Sequel Bait

The Word: It's always interesting when one finds a favourite author, because no matter how awesome an author and some of their books are, everyone has their bad days. All books aren't created equal. It's even more interesting when it comes to evaluating a favourite author's series, and how the quality degrades or evolves from the first book onward.

I started on the eighth book of Marjorie M. Liu's Dirk & Steele series, then moved on to the ninth. They were both excellent paranormal romances, and this comes from a gal who does not often enjoy paranormals. So I thought I would see where the series started, and went to the very beginning with Tiger Eye, and was intrigued with the result.

Dela Reese, an artist with the psychic ability to manipulate metal, is vacationing in China when an old woman convinces her to purchase a mysterious, beautiful riddle box. Soon after, she is attacked by a malevolent stranger but she escapes. Back in her hotel room, she manages to open the box and is astounded when a super-hot, 7-foot-tall man-genie with awesome highlights appears.

Okay, so he's not technically a genie, just a tiger shapeshifter (hence his crazy striped hair) cursed by an evil Magi to serve whomever opens his box, but that's close enough. Hari has endured 2000 years of torment as a slave, bodyguard, hired killer, and very reluctant lover to a parade of cruel, bloodthirsty masters, and he expects Dela to be no different.

Dela, however, is appalled at Hari's curse and all-but-literally clasps the poor, tormented mankitty to her bosom. All bosom-clasping is put on hold when another mysterious assailant tries to kill Dela - with a dagger she herself designed. With Hari's help, they escape, and Dela calls her pals at Dirk & Steele (the world's only Secret Magical People Detective Agency) to help them out of this jam.

I'll be honest and flat-out say that Tiger Eye was not to my taste. It had an interesting setting, a solid mystery, and beautiful writing, but dull characters and superficial characterization. Dela just plain annoyed me. I felt I was being told she was a tough, independent, smart character while being shown that she was a naive, inexplicably innocent and easily-bruised Mary Sue whose only flaw is Caring Too Much. When she learns that one of the weapons she forged was actually used in a crime, she acts all appalled and surprised - while I kept thinking, if you hate violence so much, WHY DO YOU MAKE WEAPONS FOR A LIVING? There are a MILLION other things you could do, artistically, with metal!

I also felt her romance with Hari was very simplistic. She is literally the only person who has ever been kind to Hari in the entire 2000 years of his imprisonment, and before you know it love bounds in on heavy tiger feet and they're both perfectly in sync by the halfway mark. The attraction is very much of the "you are pure kindness and light," "you are pure bravery and sacrifice bound up in angsty pain I will heal with my pure kindness and light" variety. Again, it's not badly written, it's just not to my taste at all.

It makes the rest of the book pretty dull in terms of romantic development. What relationship obstacles they have seem token and easily brushed aside. Ultimately, they're too busy fending off assassins and bantering with the Three Sequel Baits (three hot dudes from Dirk & Steele who are friends with Dela) to really worry at or build on their relationship past It's True Love. As for fantasy elements, they're okay but the flaws show here and there - mostly in the presentation of the novel's main antagonist, a cartoonish, sketchily-drawn villain.

What interests me about my reaction to Tiger Eye is that it seemed, to me, to be very conventional. While the language reveals burgeoning amounts of the linguistic grace Liu would put to good use in later books, the use of language and the plotting and the development of the romance was very derivative, and even cheesy. All the hallmarks of a standard paranormal starter are there - copious amounts of exposition, hot super-powered angsty manfriends fated for their own sequels, obvious plot threads left tantalizingly dangling by novel's end.

But when I think about it, it makes sense. An established, successful author can take more risks, be more creative and defy more conventions because she already has a demonstrated regular readership. Someone just starting out with a series would still be required to be original and creative (of course!), but I think maybe they're expected to follow the more established "rules" of what's popular and desired in their genre because they're just starting out, and have to hook an entirely new pool of readers who have no prior experience with them.

Take it from me, though, when I say that her series has nowhere to go but up from Tiger Eye.
B-

"Wickedly Charming," by Kristine Grayson

The Chick: Melvina, a.k.a. "Mellie." Unfairly lambasted by the Grimm brothers and popular fiction in general as the Evil Stepmother to Snow White, she's made it her life's work to reveal the truth about how horrible fairy tales really are
The Rub: Trouble is, nobody listens to her because she's loud and annoying and ignorant.

Dream Casting: Lindsay Price.

The Dude: Prince Charming. Cinderella dumped him, his father walks all over him, he gave up custody of his daughters, and he's balding and paunchy. Happily ever after hasn't really happened to him yet.
The Rub: He really, really likes this beautiful stepmother, but can he learn to love again with a glass slipper lodged in his scrotum?
Dream Casting: Adrian Pasdar.

The Plot:

Mellie: LIES! LIES! LIES ABOUT ME EVERYWHERE! LIES ARE WHEN WORDS ARE SAID THAT AREN'T TRUE. BOOKS ARE FULL OF WORDS - THEREFORE IT STANDS TO REASON THAT SOME OF THEM MUST BE UNTRUE - THEREFORE BOOKS ARE FULL OF LIES ABOUT ME AND I NEED TO BAN THEM. LOGIC!

Prince Charming: I find your complete lack of restraint, logic and intelligence so gosh darn pretty!

Mellie: OMG YOU'RE SO HOT, I IMMEDIATELY HATE YOU BECAUSE YOUR LIFE IS BETTER THAN MINE, ARGH ARGH LIFE IS UNFAIR, CRUEL FATE!

Prince Charming: Your constant use of capslock is so gosh darn pretty! You should write a book about your problems!

Mellie: WELL, OKAY, THAT'S A GREAT IDEA. EXCEPT - DO PEOPLE READ ACTUAL READ BOOKS? FOR FUN? EVEN IF THEIR STUPID TEACHERS AREN'T MAKING THEM DO IT FOR SCHOOL?

Prince Charming: .... maybe I'll write the book.

Mellie: OMG WHY HAVE YOU BEEN AVOIDING ME FOR MONTHS? IT MUST BE BECAUSE I'M A BITTER OLD HAG AND YOU'RE ALREADY TIRED OF ME!

Prince Charming: ... I was writing your book! And everyone loves it!

Mellie: OH.

Prince Charming: Except for my ex-wife Cinderella, who tried to use a spell to annul the existence of my children.

Mellie: OH NO.

Prince Charming: Oh don't worry - that problem was quickly solved a chapter later and off-screen by a just-introduced secondary character!

Mellie: OH. HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

Evil Bitch Ex

1 Ghostwritten Book

1 Schlubby, Sexist Romantic Rival

2 Poorly-Developed Stepchildren

1 Bestseller than Rips Off Wicked

The Word: I love fairy tales. This is no secret. I watch Disney. I read the Grimm tales. I like the colour and the magic and the trickery. And I love how the basic enjoyability of these stories can translate so easily into different kinds of retellings and interpretations. So you'd think something like Wickedly Charming would be right up my alley, right? Wrong.

I mean, it has a good concept. At first. Our heroine, Mellie, is a perpetually-outraged woman who's the leader of PETA - the People for the Ethical Treatment of Archetypes (ha ha - it's a tired old joke that only gets older). She's tired of the way those awful brothers Grimm told all these lies that have now become the basis for much of modern literature. And she should know - since she's doomed to go down in history as Snow White's Evil Stepmother.

Now, how did the Grimm brothers find out about the magical world of the Kingdoms all fairy tale characters live in? Why did they tell such obvious lies? Why did they add parts like the magic mirror or the huntsman? These things aren't even discussed.

And Mellie's solution to the centuries of untruths? Holding protests at bookfairs, screaming at bookbuyers, and calling for the banning of books. Because they are full of lies, you see.

The heroine wants to ban books. Yeah. Let that sink in.

Mellie's counterpart is Prince Charming. Well, one of them - Cinderella's Prince Charming. Still smarting from his divorce from Cinderella (and more on her wretched characterization in a minute), he's now working as a bookseller in The Greater World (a.k.a. The Real World), which gives him access to the bookfair. There he meets Mellie and we get the standard unpleasant scene where the Bitter Bitch heroine unloads all of her problems on him and makes a lot of baseless assumptions about how great his life must be.

The heroine is not only a Bitter Bitch, but she's possibly dumber than a box of Rapunzel's hair, since Prince Charming literally has to explain the concept of fiction to her. She doesn't understand how people can just make stuff up on the spot and put that into writing. Isn't that lying?

NO.

Prince Charming, despite being a rabid bibliophile, is somehow not repulsed by her clear disdain and ignorance of literature as a whole. Instead, she's the prettiest girl he's ever seen. So he decides to help her. He explains to Mellie that screaming at people like a demented self-righteous howler monkey is not the best way to change hearts and minds. Taking a moment to dump on the entire subgenre of paranormal romance, he shows how ugly nasty vampires changed their PR by getting people to write books where they are the tortured heroes. So perhaps Mellie should write a book that tells the story from her point of view - and he'll be super happy to help her write it.

So, the concept itself is a strong one - the idea that fairy tales oversimplified the complex family dynamics of certain characters - but the novel itself just does not follow through, and instead does the same thing the fairy tales did. It still tells a lazy, underdeveloped, oversimplified story, just with the villain-and-hero roles reversed. Oh, all the stepmothers were just overworked women in tough situations who just made a few mistakes, and all the princesses were spoiled, evil, clawing, envious bitches. How convenient.

There's also the laughable fact that while the protagonist CONSTANTLY RAGES about how older women are made into villains for fairytales, the only recognizable villain in Wickedly Charming IS AN OLDER WOMAN: a middle-aged Cinderella, who is cruelly shoehorned into the Completely Evil Murderous Ex Role. This book, whose heroine complains that fairy tales distort ideas about women, gives us a villain who literally tries to wish her children out of existence because she loves attention, money and the spotlight too much. One small step for Cinderella, one giant leap backwards for womankind.

This story could have had a perfectly decent, nuanced, subtle plot where Prince Charming and Cinderella divorced because they didn't really know each other - they were two dazed teenagers with stars in their eyes who got married after knowing each other for less than a day thanks to some preternaturally tiny footwear. It happens. That would have been a great plot point. But instead, the novel goes the cartoon route and makes Cinderella a monstrously selfish, unambiguously evil sociopath.

How am I supposed to like Mellie, either? She's rude, she's bitter, she's envious, and she's so. Effing. IGNORANT that I just couldn't stand her. She doesn't understand one thing about how the world works and is just so blindly hateful of any woman younger and prettier than her (which, hey, SOUNDS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE HER CHARACTER WAS IN THE ORIGINAL FAIRY TALE, HMMMMM). And nothing about her character is consistent. It turns out she secretly burned out her magic keeping Snow White alive, and kept it a secret from everyone - and yet she's spent centuries stewing in impotent rage about how people misconstrue her actions. You can't tell me that she doesn't care what anyone thinks - and then make her number one motivation to change what people think about her!

And what about Prince Charming? Talk about ruining the Beta model of heroes. He's not a Beta, he's - hmmm, what's the last letter of the Greek Alphabet? There's shy, and then there's just plain spineless. This quivering, flavourless Jell-O mould of a man is frightened of everything and pushed around by everyone and is constantly nervous and insecure (despite being breathtakingly handsome). He scurries to and fro so regularly I wondered if he was one of the mice turned into a footman by mistake. And believe me, if you've read my blog before, you know I have a particular tendre for shy Beta heroes. This hero, however, takes it a step too far. Several times while reading this novel I wanted to shout at him to nut up, take it like a man, and stop (literally!) running away from the heroine.

The story is simplistic, the conflict (where there is any - the greater part of this novel is internal moping/bitching, let's be honest) is contrived, and the protagonists are just completely unlikeable. Ultimately, Wickedly Charming calls the kettle black - it lashes out at all fairy tales for being distorted and misogynist and poorly told, and yet it doesn't try to rise above any of these tropes, either.
D

A Very Unfortunate DNF Review, "Demon Moon," by Meljean Brook

This is going to be a different review from my usual. Regular readers to my blog know that I very, very rarely DNF a book.

To me, a DNF doesn't necessarily mean the book is horrifically offensive or badly written. After all, I pushed all the way through Fool Me Once and Whitney, My Love.

Nowadays, though, I've started reading differently. I read slower than I would like (I'm sure everyone with a TBR thinks they read slower than they would like), so lately when I'm with books that are tiresome, I've found myself skimming. But I've never yet brought myself to DNF (Did Not Finish) a book.

Until this one, and it was a tough call, let me tell you.

I loved the previous book in this series, Demon Angel. I thought it had excellent world-building (the idea of angelic Guardians guarding the human race from demons and vampires), fantastic characters (Lilith is one of my favourite heroines ever), and a great love story.

Demon Moon, on the other hand, had a lot of stuff. Incredibly detailed, pointless, and probably unnecessary stuff. And two characters with really complicated and detailed magical backstories and less-developed actual, uh, human problems who have to make a romance in all of that.

So our hero is Colin. I loved him from his appearances in Demon Angel and in Meljean Brook's story "Falling for Anthony" from the otherwise-terrible Hot Spell anthology. So you'd think I'd like him here. Well, he's not bad, but ... he's a vampire, only he's a special vampire because he got turned by a nosferatu (a bald, creepy proto-vampire) instead of another vampire, and he's also special because his blood was tainted by a magic sword used to kill a dragon, and he's also super duper special because for some forgotten and doubtless complicated reason he is also capable of seeing into the Chaos realm whenever he looks at a mirror. And he also, like, spent a week in Chaos. For reasons. And this screwed him up, I think. Because of reasons.

And our heroine is Savi - a human girl who was practically raised by Hugh (the hero of Demon Angel) and her grandmother after her parents were murdered, so she also knows Colin by association. And she's also a brilliant computer programmer - who's secretly working for the government. For reasons. And when the novel opens, she actually gets mysterious superpowers after she uses computer wire, spit, and a mouthful of hellhound venom to take out a nosferatu who's smuggled his way onto her airplane. Yeah.

Oh, and she and Colin apparently spent a week in Caelum (the non-denominational version of Heaven for this book, it seems, although we still have Hell), something I did not at all remember from the previous books, and it was apparently a very emotionally contentious time for the both of them because they spend pages and pages hinting and circling around what happened instead of just out and telling us. ARGH!

From the first hundred and fifty pages I read, the external plot is that the nosferatu that were trapped in Chaos by the Good Guys in the last book due to some incredibly complicated shenanigans are now trying to escape, using other incredibly complicated shenanigans - calling for Savi, Colin, Hugh, Lilith, Selah and Michael to come up with EVEN MORE COMPLICATED SHENANIGANS to save the day.

At least that's what I got out of it. In my opinion, this novel was way, way, WAY too complicated for only the second book of a series. I constantly felt like I was missing something and that I had to keep up. I couldn't get involved with the story or invested in the characters because I was too busy trying to keep all the useless, unnecessary worldbuilding facts straight (what's the difference between a vampire's bloodlust and sex-lust? I HAVE NO CLUE but apparently it's really important in the early stages of the romance). There's Earth, Caelum, Hell and the Chaos Realm. There are vampires, nosferatu, Guardians, demons, hellhounds, werewolves, and wyrmwolves. Each with their own rules and special powers and this Guardian can teleport, but this Guardian can't and this demon can but only on Sundays, etc etc. etc.

After about a hundred and fifty pages, I gave up, exhausted. I didn't want to read anymore, I didn't care about the characters at all, the romance at this stage was just so one-note (Colin wants to get into Savi's pants but he has to do it in a douchey-seductive-vampire way because he doesn't want to reveal that he has feelings and Savi really doesn't want people to bite her but Colin is sexy so she'll let him). Just ... no. When I realized that reading this book had become a chore, and that there were 300 pages left, I just gave up. Life is short.

It reminded me of Marjorie Liu and her Dirk & Steele series, and how she's managed to have such a wonderful, detailed paranormal series while avoiding these very pitfalls. I was confused by Meljean Brook's second book (even after reading the first one and the "Falling for Anthony" short story), but I started what turned out to be the eighth in Marjorie M. Liu's series (The Wild Road, which has one of the best virgin heroes of all time) and loved the hell out of it.

Even so, giving up this book was difficult - I like the author herself, it wasn't badly written, there were a lot of original concepts throughout, and I'm sure I would have found the characters and their romance more interesting if the romance had been better incorporated into a streamlined paranormal plot instead of feeling like a distraction to the all-encompassing, overelaborate paranormal plot.

That being said, readers, have you read her other books? Are they still worth reading or will skipping Demon Moon leave me even more in the dark than I already am? Is The Iron Duke any good?