Novel: The Warded Man by Peter Brett

The Warded Man (aka The Painted Man in the UK) is Peter Brett's first novel. Four Talons! This one is a keeper for sure.

The hero grows up on a planet where the days are safe, but filled with backbreaking work to survive. The nights are filled with terrible danger from demons which rise from the core of the planet to wreak havoc, destruction and death upon all humans. The only defence the humans have against the demons are written symbols or wards which they place on their doors, windows and walls. Most humans have grown used to huddling behind their wards at night. However, sometimes the wards weaken and fail and the demons get past them and then the humans are defenseless.

The protagonist grows up wanting to fight the demons and the story is all about his search for a way to fight back and defeat the demons. He goes through a mostly solitary journey of discovery and personal metamorphosis. In his searches through ancient ruins of past civilizations destroyed by the demons, the hero discovers a way to tattoo both the defensive and offensive wards right into his skin.

Then he goes out into the night armed with warded skin and warded spears and other such weapons which he creates. In helping and rescuing others, and teaching them how to fight the demons, he becomes the subject of legend and prophecy, although he resists being called the long prophesied "Warded Man".  Along the way he also finds an ally in a young woman who has been trained as a Herb Gatherer and Healer. I found myself really liking both of these strong male and female characters.

The writing is very well done. I was totally drawn into the story and could hardly bear to put the book down. I was honestly very disappointed when the story ended, and now I can hardly wait to hunt down and read the already published sequel The Desert Spear.

I have read on Brett's website that there is a possibility of a movie coming out of this story! It may be produced by the same people who made the Resident Evil series which is a favorite of mine. (Go Alice!)

You can find the author and his works at www.PeterVBrett.com

As an aside I find it interesting that with the last two books I've read, tattoos have been magically significant in both. This isn't anything new, but it is a fascinating subject. Tattoos have had mystical and magickal significance in many cultures throughout history.  Whoever is the artist of the one below, I want his number! Gorgeous work!

Novel: Night Myst by Jasmine Galenorn

Night Myst is the first in a series about the Indigo Court. This novel was a real hoot! I couldn't put it down, and I was very disappointed when it ended all too soon and left me hanging. The next book in the series won't be out until next summer! Booo! It's like having to wait for the next season of True Blood.

Not only are there the big bad vampires of the Crimson Court, there are the even more bigger badder vampiric Fae of the Indigo Court. All the vampires are pretty darn scary - powerful, bloodthirsty predators that they are.

Obviously you can tell from my blog that I love owls. Well, wasn't I chuffed to discover that the protagonist Cicely Waters (who is as tough and brave and streetwise as they come) just happens to be a human-fae hybrid wind witch who is from a line of fae who changes into owls! Hoot! Hoot! :D She also has some pretty hot magical tattoos (wolves and owls). Also, looking at the cover, wouldn't I kill for a set of abs like hers! The cover artist did a nice job!

Her lover is a full Fae who changes into a wolf. He also has magical tattoos. Unfortunately he's been turned by the Indigo Court.

The author Jasmine Galenorn is able to write about magic and the supernatural with convincing ease and comfort  - and no wonder since she is a witch in real life. She's also a very prolific author with several supernatural series under her belt.

Well worth checking out. Three Talons!

You can find her at www.galenorn.com

Novel: Daemon's Mark by Caitlin Kittredge

Daemon's Mark is the fifth in Kittredge's "Nocturne City" series. The protagonist Luna Wilder was bitten and turned into a werewolf in her teens then grew up to become a tough female cop working supernatural crimes. The world that she lives in is full of supernatural creatures like magicians, selkies, trolls, and harpies. Throw in some Russian mobsters trafficking in supernatural females for the sex slave industry, and some supernatural bio-engineering and it's a suitably creepy, fun and entertaining novel. It's not badly written. It took me "away" while I read it so it was a success. I didn't mind my escape ride into Luna Wilder's world at all. I'll be on the look out for more of Caitlin Kittredge's books. I'm perching on three Talons out of four!

From her back cover photo she is young and cute and dresses just a little bit Goth.

She has a website:  www.caitlinkittredge.com

Enjoy!

Next on my list to read: a dark supernatural novel by Yasmine Galenorn (who besides being a prolific fantasy author is also a Shamanic Witch in "real life".)

TV series: True Blood, Haven, Lost Girl, Boardwalk Empire

So, "True Blood" is over until next spring/summer. Boo! *long dark sulk*

I guess I'm just going to have to make do by catching up with "Vampire Diaries", "Haven", and the new succubus/fae show "Lost Girl". The interesting thing is that "Haven" and "Lost Girl" are both Canadian made productions. I caught a glimpse of one our  red Toronto streetcars in one of the scenes of the series premiere this past Sunday. Haven is shot out on the East coast.

I might give Boardwalk Empire a go as well. It's not anything supernatural, but it is about prohibition, mobsters and flappers (aka, booze, violence and sex). I'll temporarily make do with that if I can't have my supernatural fix.

Novel: Wild Hunt by Margaret Ronald

Wild Hunt is Margaret Ronald's second book in a series. Her first book was Spiral Hunt.

The first question I always ask myself after finishing a book is, "Would I read it again?" I think if it was a few years later and I found it on a library shelf and I couldn't find anything else to read at the time I'd check it out again. It wasn't so thrilling that I'd go and buy it from a bookstore and keep it on my shelves, but yes, I'd read it again, so that means it was a decent read. I'd also get the first novel out the library to read as well.

As is usual for my preference, the protagonist Evie Scelan is a strong, independent, kick-a** female character. She works as a mundane bicycle courier in Boston. Her supernatural nature is that of a "Hound" and it comes down the family line from the "old Irish" (whatever that really means - the author isn't historically or culturally specific enough). She isn't exactly a shape-changer, but she has all the abilities to "scent" and track and chase down whomever she needs to. Since taking down the corrupt Fiana organization who ruled the Boston "undercurrent" in Spiral Hunt, she is now the de facto person in power of the city. Her boyfriend, irony of ironies, turns out to be a very reluctant werewolf. (He is also a nerdy graduate student with a miserable TA job. This brought back memories for me of being in the same situation so I felt quite sympathetic towards him). And then there is the stolen horn of the Wild Hunt. So there is lots of magickal canine influence afoot, anose, and atail in the city of Boston. Woof!

Not epic, but basically well written, entertaining, and fun to read. This one gets three owl talons. It's a percher, but not a keeper.

Finished "The Search" and on to the "Wild Hunt"

I've been so busy lately I only have a couple of hours at the end of each day to read a few chapters. I finished The Search last night.

In general I liked the protagonist - at first - but then she gradually began to annoy me. She's a strong woman. She practices martial arts, she can shoot a gun, she runs and works out, she's independent, she has good taste, she likes to garden, she's neat and clean and organized, she can escape being tied up, drugged, and locked in the trunk of a car by a serial killer, she's told by a female FBI agent that she'd make an excellent agent, and basically she's an all around intimidatingly efficient alpha female. She's is without a doubt, the great heroine of the book. And she accomplishes this all without being Barbie doll perfect or gorgeous. But still, I think she turns out to be a New York Times Bestsellers List caricature of what a strong female character should be like.

The one thing I could not fault was the dog-training. The protagonist could easily have been a female version of Cesar Milan, Dog Whisperer.

The writing is slick and glossy, and I was taken in by this when I first started reading the book. There aren't any really obvious problems with the writing until you start to realize that it's the unidimensional characterizations and the really simple plot which are the true underlying faults. Then the book starts to taste like the Fruit Loops that the protagonist likes to eat for breakfast -- all white sugar and no nutritional substance boxed in cardboard.
The protagonist captures the second maniacal killer (in training by the first), hands him over to the police, and accepts the wedding proposal of the hunky man at the end of the story. Too pat for me. Don't you just hate such a cliched happy ending?
She doesn't really grow or change at all during the entire novel. She's too strong, too independent, just "too, too, too" to be believable, or to have any sympathy or empathy for her. She's like an unassailable mountain.
The two villains aren't scary to me. To me they are just too flattened out and simple.
Her boyfriend/fiancee isn't really all that complicated either. He's good for sex, making furniture, and using his fists on the face of the would-be killer at the end.
There isn't an ounce of supernatural mystique or danger to the story at all. It seems I am hardwired
to need an element of "otherness" to my stories.

Owl Pellets for this one!

Ah well, on to the next novel - which IS a proper dark urban fantasy novel set in Boston with a nitty gritty tough heroine who while dangerous, isn't unassailable, and there's lots and lots of magick in it. It's called Wild Hunt. (And no it's not the one by Jane Yolen - who is another one of my fave authors).

The only thing that The Search and the Wild Hunt have in common is the basic theme of "Sniff Rover, go find!" Both have dogs (or hounds) which chase down and find things by scent. I hope that's not giving away too much.

By the way, (totally random factoid inserted here), I attended my first Belly Dance class last night. Woo Hoo for me! Fun Wow!

Spiritual Sensuality in Writing and Music

I went to the library yesterday and picked up three new novels to read.

Strangely enough, one of them is not "dark fantasy" at all. It's a Nora Roberts book called The Search. It has search and rescue dogs. I work with animals. It has a woman living independently in a cottage on an island which is very close to my own lifelong dream. She trains search and rescue dogs. Can I ever relate to her frustration at trying to teach people how to interact with their dogs! She enjoys blogging everyday on her dog-training blog. Hello! I have caught the blogging bug! There is an unusual, intelligent, attentive, creative, and intriguing man as a romantic interest. There is a diabolical serial killer on the hunt for the main protagonist. That's close enough to a vampire if I stretch it I suppose. At least it adds just that necessary bit of danger to my reading. But, I'm glad I don't have any serial killers after me in real life! It's written fairly well -- meaning that none of the sentences or paragraphs set off any of my bleep-o-meters. So it gets a pass even though it's not dark fantasy, and I'm only 143 pages into a 488 page novel.

As I lay in bed reading myself to sleep last night I realized a salient point. More than anything else, Robert's use of everyday, earthy, sensual details to keep the reader grounded, engaged and interested appeals to the Pagan and Witch in me. Part of the slowly simmering seduction between the protagonist and her love interest involves teaching the man to relate to his puppy through the senses of a dog. Another part involves healthy, homemade food like a crock-pot of minestrone, a loaf of rosemary bread, good red wine, and a dish of olives. (YUM!) He makes wood into artful furniture and convinces her to let him uproot an old stump which he wants to make into a massive sink. She agrees only if he will buy and plant a new tree in the void left by the removal of the stump. What makes the story and the characters come alive for me is their perceptions of the quality of light, the time of day or night, taste, smell, hearing, and feeling, their concern for their environment and the interconnection of all things. How much more Pagan can you get?

And this realization made me create some connections outside of the novel. My last thoughts before I turned out the bedside table lamp lingered on how early it got dark last night. We are just in the beginning of September, and it was pitch black at 8:30 pm. For a Pagan, the amount of light or darkness one has each day as the Wheel of the Year turns is extremely important. Every day, with all of our senses, we pay attention to the Sun, the Moon, the Air, Fire, Water and Earth.

This summer I re-kindled a fixation upon Kate Bush's music and it is this same focus on The Sensual World (the title of one of her albums) which also grabs the Pagan in me. To illustrate, below are the lyrics to her song "Nocturne" which is on her Aerial album. The lyrics intertwine the sensuous and the spiritual all at once - which the Pagan in me knows is the best way to have things. It seems that both Nora Roberts and Kate Bush feel the same way. So here's to the spiritual immanent within the sensual!

"On this midsummer night
Everyone is sleeping
We go driving
Into the moonlight

Could be in a dream
Our clothes are on the beach
These prints of our feet
Lead right up to the sea

No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic

We tire of the city
We tire of it all
We long for
Just that something more

Could be in a dream
Our clothes are on the beach
The prints of our feet
Lead right up to the sea

No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic

The stars are caught in our hair
The stars are on our fingers
A veil of diamond dust
Just reach up and touch it

The sky's above our heads
The sea's around our legs
In milky, silky water
We swim further and further

We diving down
We diving down

A diamond night
A diamond sea
And a diamond sky

We dive deeper and deeper
We dive deeper and deeper
Could be we are here
Could be in a dream

It came up on the horizon
Rising and rising
In a sea of honey, a sky of honey
A sea of honey, a sky of honey

Look at the light
At all the time it's a changing
Look at the light
Climbing up the aerial

Bright, white coming alive jumping off the aerial
All the time it's a changing like now
All the time it's a changing like then again
All the time it's a changing
And all the dreamers are waking"

So busy!

I can't believe it. I've been so busy the last week or so that I haven't had time to read a book! Now that *is* busy! I usually have the time to read something. But, between work and my new gym work out routine I have no time and energy for anything else. I finish this one job on the 19th. After that I will have more time to read, and post in this blog. In the meantime, I was thinking I might go back over some of the novels I read in the past and write up a bit about what I can remember. It's not as good as writing right after reading a book, but it's better than writing nothing at all. Apologies to all following if I'm boring you!