I am still reading Shorn, by Larissa Niec; and there are three more newish older books by Julie Czerneda waiting for me, Reap the Wild Wind, Riders of the Storm, and Rift in the Sky.

There’s a few I’ve picked up at this year’s Cons: Ending an Ending by Danny Birt, Secrets of the Sands, by Leona Wisoker and Rum and Runestones, edited by Valerie Griswold-Ford.

And shame of all shames, I am still on the second book of Juliet E. McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn series, the Swordsman’s Oath.

I found three pre-sparkly vampire novels by Barbara Hambly, Traveling With the Dead, Stranger at the Wedding, Those who Hunt the Night.

Wendy has lent me The Family Trade series by Charles Stross.

Jack McDevitt is publishing another Alex Benedict novel this fall (2 November).

There’s still the remainder of David B. Coe’s first trilogy, The Lon Tobyn Chronicle, to finish, not to mention his several others.

There’s the self-promised re-reads of the SwordDancer saga by Jennifer Roberson, and the entire Culture novels over again, Iain M. Banks.

We’re not going to talk about how behind I am on the 2009 Nebula nominees and winners.

This has all been happily interjected with House of Cards by C. E. Murphy, read on the Kindle and Star Wars #Whatever, Fate of the Jedi set–pushed straight up to the top of the pile as per the loan of the entire set in hardback from my much respected first boss.

At least I have read everything that John Steinbeck and Linnea Sinclair have ever written, so I can thankfully tick those off the list.

It’s been a long while since the last book in The Walker Papers (Coyote Dreams) came out. C.E. Murphy has been working on a couple other series – The Negotiator trilogy, which I didn’t love, and the Inheritors’ Cycle, which I haven’t tried. This has made me sad because I adore The Walker Papers series. Joanne is a fantastic protagonist and it’s really cool to see Aboriginal culture and tradition explored in an urban fantasy. Plus, the author incorporates aspects of other belief systems/mythologies, particularly Celtic stuff, which is really neat.

In this installment of the Walker Papers, Joanne is dealing with zombies. Honest to goodness zombies that show up as a result of an evil cauldron and Halloween. A lot of my favourite secondary characters are there, as always, plus a couple I wasn’t expecting, which is always fun.

There’s something about Joanne that really resonates with me. I don’t know if it’s the fact that she just plunges headlong because she can’t think of another solution, or the fact that she thinks in mechanic metaphors, or the fact that she’s wearing a Xena costume at the Halloween party that opens the book, but she’s a great character. I just want to know what else is going to happen around her, because bad things really do seem to happen around her. Can’t wait for the next installment, due out sometimes this year!

ACROSS TWO EXTRAORDINARY WORLDS, TRUTH IS THE DEADLIEST MAGIC

Though gifted with an uncanny intuition that allows her to discern when someone is lying, Lara Jansen is sure there’s nothing particularly special about her. All that changes when a handsome but mysterious man enters her quiet Boston tailor shop and reveals himself to be a prince of Faerie. What’s more, Dafydd ap Caerwynn claims that Lara is a truthseeker, a person with the rare talent of being able to tell truth from falsehood. Dafydd begs Lara to help clear his name by solving his brother’s murder, of which Dafydd himself is the only suspect.

Acting against her practical nature, Lara agrees to step through a window into another world. Now caught between bitterly opposed Seelie forces and Dafydd’s secrets, which are as perilous as he is irresistible, Lara finds that her abilities are increasing in unexpected and uncontrollable ways. With the fate of two worlds at stake and a malevolent entity wielding the darkest of magic, Lara and Dafydd will risk everything on a love that may be their salvation—or the most treacherous illusion of all.

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It’s hard for me to choose at times.

Sounds innocuous enough, right? But it kind of struck me.

Of course I wouldn’t write on the weekends if I were a full-time writer, but what an adjustment it would be. Right now, during the week I write after the kids go to bed. On the weekends, my hubby occasionally will take the kids out for a couple of hours to give me a chunk of time to write too.

Essentially, right now, I have two jobs. I just don’t get paid for one of them.

Have any of you thought about the changes that would happen in your life if you were to become a successful author? Let’s leave the dreams of J.K. Rowling-like millionaire-dom out of it. I’m talking more about how the little things in your life would change.

For me, the idea of working from home permanently is hugely appealing. I can just picture me sending the kids off to school, heading to my computer and working, then being home when they’re done for the day. That would be a dream come true.

TOPAZ status: Chapter 17 thinks it has me out for the count, but I will win!

La lune... comme c'est mystérieux!

Coeurs de Lune est une compilation sur un même thème – celui de la lune- de trois courts romans: La magie de la lune de Mercedes Lackey, La nuit des sept lunes de Tanith Lee et La lune rouge de C.E. Murphy. Cette compilation a été éditée en 2008 par Luna, un label des éditions Harlequin. Ah, je vous vois pousser des cris d’orfraies à la lecture de ce nom. Oui, vous avez bien lu, Harlequin alias les éditions des bouquins à l’eau-de-rose et des romans de gare kleenex qui ont un intérêt littéraire très mitigé. Alors pourquoi? Explicationnage.

Premièrement, à cause de la thématique. La lune est un corps astral qui m’a toujours fasciné et depuis l’aube des temps, liée au mystique voire au fantastique. Deuxièmement, à cause de Tanith Lee, autre prêtresse des romans vampiriques à l’instar de la non-moins célèbre Anne Rice, dont j’avais depuis longtemps entendu parler et dont je n’avais rien lu. En dépit de ma réticence envers la maison d’édition sus-nommée, j’ai finalement craqué. Même si je le reconnais entièrement, le titre de ce recueil, ainsi que sa couverture, sont quand même assez cucul-la-praline.

Vu qu’il s’agit de trois romans, il serait trop fastidieux de vous proposer une critique des trois dans un seul billet. J’y consacrerais donc un billet pour chacun. En attendant, je vous donne quand même mon sentiment général sur cette compilation (de 408 pages au total) et sa pertinence. Je vous préviens, cela ne va pas être triste.

J’ai donc abordé ce recueil avec méfiance mais aussi avec une certaine curiosité puisque je n’avais lu aucun de ces trois auteurs. L’éditeur nous fait grâce d’une préface qui expliquerait le choix de la réunion de ces trois textes en un seul ouvrage, le directeur de collection ne doit pas être très loquace. Et donc sans préambule, on commence directement par le premier roman, La magie de la lune de Mercedes Lackey puis suivent les deux derniers récits. Il n’y a pas plus d’épilogue ou de postface. C’est de la compilation pure et dure, comme on faisait tout seul, du temps des radio-cassette, ses propres compilations musicales.

Une fois l’ouvrage refermé, je me suis rendue compte de mon erreur, ou plutôt de mon inattention. Si j’avais été enchantée par l’attrait lunaire du recueil, j’avais complètement fait abstraction du premier mot du titre de l’ouvrage. Hé oui, Coeurs de lune. Qui dit coeur, dit sentiment et souvent dans le romanesque, on réserve ces questions ultra essentielles aux femmes. Pour résumer le concept de recueil, ces trois textes parlent de femmes, de leur sentiments et la lune joue un rôle un peu mystérieux dans tout ça. Bon, je vous rassure, cela ne parle PAS QUE de ça bien que ce soit le lien principal entre ces trois romans. Autre point pour vous rassurer, si le texte de Lackey est bien dans la mouvance fantasy, celui de Tanith Lee est à mi-chemin entre fantasy et fantastique et enfin celui de Murphy a quelques pointes de fantastique.

Globalement, je n’ai donc pas aimé ce recueil. Ce n’était pas ce à quoi je m’attendais. Ceci dit, comme vous le verrez dans mes prochains billets, il y a des qualités dans certains de ces romans même certains que je n’ai pas détesté. Mais si je devais analyser objectivement cette compilation, elle n’est pas pour le pur fan de fantasy ou de fantastique. Car malgré tout, on sent un peu le côté Harlequin marketing nunuche [le destiiiiiiiiin de ces "pauvres petites femmes frêles et fragiles qui ont bobo dans leur petit coeur"] et cela m’a gênée.

Homecoming

The graphic novel Homecoming which is being produced by the Dabel Brothers will be coming out July 21st. This will contain all 5 of Mercy Thompson comic book installments (#1 is out now). I'm also eying C.E. Murphy's Take a Chance (GC coming out end of Nov 2009)

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A lot of people are posting a year end post for 2008. It's nice to see people looking back at the books they read for the year and picking out their favorite reads, and it's interesting to see what they picked. I thought it would be a good thing to try myself because with it recorded, I can look back in later years and see what my tastes were like.

Out of a total of 77 books read this year, very few got into my best list, but book ratings are highly subjective.  I just went with my gut and rated them according to how I felt about the book as soon as I finished reading them. These lists are compiled from ratings I put down in my private notes.

All the links to my reviews here are to my Livejournal.

The Books that Blew Me Away  – These books are those I gave top marks to when I first read them. It's a very hard list to get onto because I have to feel like I'm falling in love and cannot be parted from the book for it to get on this list. Only three got on it this year.

• Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews (my review)
• Pride, Prejudice, and Jasmine Fields by Melissa Nathan (my review)
• Keeping it Real by Justina Robson (my review pt 1, pt 2)

Books that Came Close to Blowing Me Away - These came very close to getting top marks from me. This is a personal thing, but the books above I would put down and then obssessively think about when I could pick them up again. The books below, I didn't feel as consumed by the book, but still felt really impressed by them.

• Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair (my review)
• Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready (my review)
• Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (I need to review this when I have the book in my hands)
• The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald (review coming soon)

Books I Really Liked/ Keepers. These each had several moments where I loved the book and overall I think these are books that deserve to be loved and read by others, but for some reason or other these didn't get into the top 7. I still consider these keepers, and all these authors are pretty much autobuys/ must read backlist authors. There are 19 of these books this year (Linnea Sinclair's name comes up a lot here, I was reading her backlist in 2008):

• The Down Home Zombie Blues by Linnea Sinclair (my review)
• Exit Strategy (Nadia Stafford, Bk 1) by Kelley Armstrong (my review)
• Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas (my review)
• Grimspace by Ann Aguirre (my review)
• An Accidental Goddess by Linnea Sinclair (my review)
• Urban Shaman by C. E. Murphy (my review)
• Wanderlust by Ann Aguirre (my review)
• Cry Wolf (Alpha and Omega, Bk 1) by Patricia Briggs (my review)
• Easy Freedom by Liz Berry (my review)
• Jinx by Jennifer Estep (my review)
• Finders Keepers by Linnea Sinclair (my review)
• Gabriel's Ghost by Linnea Sinclair (my review pt 1, pt 2)
• The Good Neighbors by Holly Black (my review)
• The Nanny by Melissa Nathan (my review)
• Grave Sight (Harper Connelly, Bk 1) by Charlaine Harris (my review)
• Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler (my review)
• Burndive by Karin Lowachee (my review)
• An Ice Cold Grave (Harper Connelly, Bk 3) by Charlaine Harris (my review)
• The Decoy Princess and Princess at Sea by Dawn Cook (my review)

And for my New Year's Resolution – it's the same resolution as last year , to read 100 books.

• 2006 – 103 books
• 2007 - 99 books
• 2008 – 77 books
• 2009 – let's get it back up to 100!!

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Hands of Flame (The Negotiator, Book 3)

actually got this one a while ago, but didn't get around to it until.. last weekend, actually. i would be posting thoughts of these much more regularly if firefox wasn't such a bitch with the spacing, which i still have no idea how to fix. and IE freezes and crashes often for the home desktop, so i'm typing both of these at school. anyway.

the conclusion left me floundering a bit. i personally liked eliseo daisani, and thought that he didn't become quite as personified as i expected it to get in this installation. i mean sure, great secret revealed and all, but i want to KNOW him, as a character. it's just a bit of a shame that we never really get to it.

still love janx, still pretty hot for alban, i guess. margrit isn't coming through as strong as she did in the previous installations, however, though i suspect that's more events getting out of her hands than her actually becoming weaker. that little episode with the "heart of the earth" was kind of random, and at the end of the day nothing really was explained by it. but i guess that's fine, if we are to know that there will be future installations, just simply that this is on halt so she can write the walker papers from here on for a bit. the random introduction of the daughters was.. well.. random. you don't really get to see it coming, and it doesn't, until about 3/4 into the book, and by then you're like what? NOW? but i guess it's fine. again, need more personification. such a wide host of characters and no time in getting to know them, it seems.

so it seems like a lot of characters can actually come back from the dead again, i wonder at chelsea huo's real identity. i wonder at the real origin of vampires. many, many things left unanswered, but that leaves me in more hope than ever that there will be a next installation, rather than having this be the final volume. that said, i guess there's nothing much i can do but wait from here on.

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Underground by Kat Richardson

Underground is the third book in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series, and to my mind is the best one yet.

Harper Blaine is a private investigator who was resuscitated after being dead for 2 minutes. Those 2 minutes change the course of her life by enabling her to interact with the Grey and those who inhabit it. The Grey is a layer between our world and the supernatural world. Ghosts, zombies, vampires and other preternatural beings are now a part of Harper’s life, complicating and sometimes endangering it.

In Underground, Quinton, her mysterious security-expert and friend comes to her with concerns about Seattle’s homeless, some of who are disappearing and others whose bodies are discovered mutilated. It is quickly apparent to Harper & Quinton that there is a supernatural element to the murders and disappearances. Quinton takes Harper down into the Underground, the city-beneath-the-city, where Seattle’s homeless survive, to investigate.

While they traverse the extensive corridors of the Underground, Harper begins to discover some of Quinton’s secrets. She realizes she must decide whether she can trust the man  she knows almost nothing about.

It’s been very satisfying to see these characters grow. Harper’s at a point where she has had to accept the large role the Grey and it’s inhabitants will always play in her life. In the previous books, Harper was still coming to terms with this. Now, she’s much more matter-of-fact about the idea that her next case could as easily have a supernatural connection as it could a mundane one.

This shift in her life, work, and attitude inevitably impact her personal life. At the opening of Underground, Harper and her erstwhile boyfriend, Will, are attempting to resuscitate their flagging relationship. Harper quickly realizes how impossible it is to keep her new life and abilities from affecting Will. Can she integrate her very normal boyfriend into her increasingly extraordinary life?

As I’ve been reading Underground, 2 other series have been pinging in the back of my head:

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series

Maybe cause I’m listening to T is for Trespass right now, but I really see a lot of similarity between Kinsey and Harper. Loners at heart and independent almost to a fault. They are both sometimes lonely, but seem to find it an acceptable price to pay for their highly-valued solitude.

Also, both series really take joy in describing the nuts and bolts of investigation. Unlike other series that frenetically shoot from one climactic scene to another, Ms Grafton and Ms Richardson pace their books more evenly, methodically recounting the day to day activities of a P.I., including the routine of background checks, surveillance, phone calls and research. This attention to detail makes Kinsey and Harper more three-dimensional than other urban fantasy or mystery characters. This writing style also builds suspense, and makes the climax of the book much more exciting and satisfying.

  

Urban Shaman by C. E. Murphy

C. E. Murphy’s The Walker Papers series
Also based in Seattle, this series focuses on police officer Joanne Walker. Urban Shaman is the first book in the series.

Like Harper’s journeys into the Grey, Joanne also accesses the supernatural world, though hers is a more mystical journey. This ability to interact and sometimes even battle on this otherworldly plane, set Joanne (and Harper) apart from the “normal” people around them. Aside from these exceptional ability, both Joanne and Harper are average people. They don’t have super-powers, they aren’t martial arts or weapons experts,  and they don’t have a bad-ass attitude.

Seattle at night

One important character in both the Greywalker series and the Walker Papers series is the city of Seattle. It is much more than a geographic location. The Greywalker books are steeped in local history. Each book is obviously meticulously researched, and features at least one (if not a few) historic event or crime. With the Walker Papers, the Seattle captured as a little more to do with a attitude and vibe of the city. Ms Murphy conveys the feel of what it’s like to live there.

With each successive book becoming more engrossing than the last, I can’t wait for the next one in the Greywalker series.

Here is an excerpt from Underground. The next book in the Greywalker series, Vanished will be out July 30, 2009.

Relevant links:

• Kat Richardson’s author website and blog
• C. E. Murphy’s author website and blog
• Sue Grafton’s author website

Hands of Flame by C E Murphy

While in SD, I saw that C E Murphy’s conclusion to her Negotiator trilogy, Hands of Flame was available on Audible. I really enjoyed the audio production of Heart of Stone, and the second book House of Cards was even better. My only frustration was that I had forgotten a few details between book 1 and book 2.

Usually, I’m too impatient and just plow ahead and read the most current book, rather than going back to reread previous books in a series; but, I enjoyed this series so much, I really wanted to have it all fresh in my mind. I’m so glad I did.

If you haven’t read this series, it is the story of Margrit Knight, a young legal aid attorney in NYC. Her life is turned upside-down when she finds out that the Old Races: vampires, dragons, gin, selkies, and gargoyles, exist. As her life becomes increasingly complicated by her involvement in their world, she must hide what is going on from her friends, family and sometimes-boyfriend.

Alban, a gargoyle who is in a self-imposed exile from the rest of his kind is drawn to Margrit, and she to him. I really love his character. He definitely has the strong-guy, doesn’t take crap traits most romantic heroes have, but he is also is a thinker. His thoughtful words and actions are due in great part to what it means to be gargoyle. He has a quiet strength that was really refreshing.

The series is original, and the emotions are believable. Ms Murphy does a great job of creating authentic characters, with motivations and actions that are consistent to that individual. Case in point: Margrit’s on again-off again boyfriend and NYPD cop, Tony. It would have been easy to utilize the stock-character of the jerky, macho “other guy”, but Tony is much more nuanced than that. Over the course of the story, he constantly surprised me by growing as a character.

I’m not going into any details about Hands of Flame, because if you haven’t read the first two, I don’t want to give anything away. Ms Murphy’s world building is complex, and while I guess one could read Hands of Flame as a stand-alone, I don’t see why one would want to.

If you have read the first two, Hands of Flame is a great conclusion to the series. The action is exciting and the plot twists are unexpected, but believable. Margrit’s character growth is enjoyable to observe, and by book 3, she truly has assumed the mantle of the Negotiator.

2 last things:

As much as I love/prefer on-going series, I have to say, I really loved the tightness of this trilogy. There was a definite beginning, middle and end to the story arc, and as I listened to the last chapters, it was with real satisfaction of finishing a story that was well told.

The narrator, Eve Bianco, did a mostly incredible job. I always feel the narrator is acquitting themselves well, when they are able to make characters of the opposite sex really believable. In Ms Bianco’s case, my favorite vocal characterization was Alban. She really captured his personality, as well as using a dead-sexy accent for him. A minor quibble was that I found a few of the accents that were supposed to originate from the British Isles sounded a bit off to me, but really, that is just a small complaint when compared to the overall great production.

More reflections soon on what else I read and listened to over the last week and a half.

Currently, I’m in the middle of:

• reading (and loving!) Ann Aguirre’s Wanderlust. I should finish it tomorrow.
• reading (ebook) Lisa Kleypas’ When Strangers Marry
• listening to Karen Marie Moning’s Darkfever. I read this, but was stoked to see it available in podcast-form.