Latest Stack of Novels

The Fall by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

This creepy, spooky, disturbing novel is the sequel to The Strain. The writing sucks me right in to the story and keeps me there until it's all over - always the mark of a successful writing job for me.  The Master's vampire take-over of the world is well underway now, having spread past New York into most major global cities. The vampires in this series appear to be something like extra-terrestrials except that the infection that they pass on is not simply a biological colonization of the human body, but also something which affects the mind and the "soul" or "spirit" since there is a sort of "hive-mind" at work. I continue to enjoy the band of vampire hunters:  the "old man" (whose entire life has been dedicated to vampire hunting) Abraham Setrakian, Eph Goodweather ex CDC, Vasily Fet the exterminator, and Augustin Elizalde (aka Gus) ex street tough. I'm looking forward to reading the next novel in the series when it comes out.

Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton

I don't care what the detractors say, I am a die-hard Anita Blake fan. Hamilton manages to keep producing novels in the Anita Blake series which never fail to keep my interest from start to finish. I'm always sorry when each book is done because it means I have the leave the world and imagination of my favorite bad-ass female vampire executioner/necromancer.  Anita may be physically tiny, but her powerful personality is awesome.  In the face of all the challenges thrown at her in each book, she keeps on growing , learning about herself and others, becoming wiser, more complex and sophisticated, more loving, and also more ruthless (as necessary).  Death-dealing is never easy for her - it comes with a price that she must pay - and that others are not so willing to pay. In this latest novel in the series, The Mother of All Darkness wants  to possess Anita's body, soul, and mind for her own and Anita needs everyone's co-operation to win the fight.

It says on the back jacket that Hamilton is a full-time writer. My wish of the day: when I grow up I'd like to be like her - a successful, published writer who makes a viable living doing what she loves to do most. I've started buying some how-to- write novel books. I'm taking notes every night in one of my brand new journals (I am a such a journal-nerd-girl). My goal this year is to educate myself as well as I can about how to write my first book, and then to set about doing that. I turn 45 this year. I think it's time for me to "grow up" by now...I've wanted to be a "real writer" since I was a tiny little girl.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

This is the first sci-fi or speculative fiction novel in a series. It's set on a human-habitable world somewhere in the Universe where people have been infected with the ability to read each other's minds. They can't shut the power out, so it drives a lot of them crazy, and results in some awful consequences and extreme reactions (like killing off women, making classic gender-divides even worse, and so on). It's well written. I like Todd the main character. I am curious to see what happens next. Can Todd be corrupted by the other men into "falling from grace" or not?

Arcane Circle  by Linda Robertson

Persephone Alcmedi aka "Seph" is a witch, and a Master vampire's Master. Her boyfriend is an uncomfirmed Domn Lupe waerewolf whose power is locked down in the mysterious tattoos all over his body. The leaders of the werewolves must challenge and confirm Johnny's powers. To save his life, Seph and Johnny must work together to solve the mystery of the tattoos all the while planning their foster daughter's 10th birthday party. A light and entertaining supernatural read.

The Hidden Goddess  by M.K.Hobson

I enjoyed reading The Native Star so much that when I saw this sequel on the library shelves I grabbed it. This is a hybrid genre novel combining steam-punk and witch-craft, and set in a Reconstruction-era America. The heroine is one Miss Emily Edwards. She is a very down-to-earth, smart, independent Earth-Witch, who is willing to do whatever it takes to save the Earth and all it's peoples, and who is totally uninterested in the ego-trappings of power, wealth, and fame.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

This gritty urban fantasy is set in a futuristic Johannesburg, South Africa.  Some humans become mysteriously "infected" or "cursed" with the dubious and mysterious gift of symbiotic animal familiars and individual shamanic magical talents. Protagonist Zinzi December is smart, tough, street-wise, and has a talent for attracting disaster and for finding missing things and people. Let the trouble begin...

The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow

This book has a series of fantastic reviews by famous authors. After reading it, I understood why. It is one of those books which stands out from my stack and glows with a life all of it's own. The writing is luminous, magickal, and hypnotic. Sentences and phrases light up in the mind and float there, waiting to be explored like rooms in a mansion, or secret doors in mysterious closets that lead into alternate worlds. Cassandra Brooks is a diviner, from a family of diviners. She doesn't just find water though, she finds a lot of other things too, in the past, present and future, in her life and other people's lives, in life and in death.

My sincerest thanks to author Bradford Morrow for teaching me the meaning of Syzygy in a most meaningful manner, and for writing beautiful thought provoking passages that I felt compelled to copy down and save in my personal journal.  This one is special - a real keeper.

I amend my original wish - when I "grow up"  into the "real writer" I hope someday to become,  I'd like to be something like a combination of Laurell K. Hamilton and Bradford Morrow.  Despite the snootery certain critics heap upon best-selling authors, I don't think that there is anything wrong with making a successful living writing books that people actually buy and enjoy reading.

I've been lazy!

Bad me, I've been lazy.
Well, to be fair, I've been busy too and I haven't had time to write about what I've been reading most of this summer.  I'm still busy, but I feel guilty now for neglecting my blog. So I will make some short notes.

Recent reads:

Night of the Vampires by Heather Graham
This novel is set in the Civil War era American south.
The female heroine is half vampire, half human. She teams up with a hunky human male from Texas. Together they set out to hunt down and eradicate an insidious vampire horde which is taking advantage  of the killings on both side of the war. Heavy on the romance. I'm not really someone who enjoys the supernatural romances on the market, but I will read them when I'm short on other kinds of more interesting reading material.

This Side of the Grave by Jeaniene Frost
That said, I still continue to enjoy reading about the relationship between half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her full vampire husband Bones. They are hot, spicy and sassy! Together they get up to all sorts of fun, sex, fighting, trouble, murder, mayhem, violence, and trying to save the world over and over again. Cat's psychic/vampire abilities continue to evolve -- a bit like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake who I also enjoy  reading about --  except Cat is only having wild monkey sex with her husband.  As an aside, I probably should add that unlike some people who complain about Anita Blake's sex life, I don't have a problem with polyamory and other sorts of more exotic bedroom sports as long as they are between fully responsible, consciously consenting adults.

Deadworld by J. N. Duncan
Jackie Rutledge is a tough female FBI agent who finds herself dealing with a serial killer who happens to be a vampire.  In the course of her investigation she finds herself falling for a yummy PI named Nick Anderson who also happens to be a vampire. Yup, I really lucked out this time folks. Another romantic supernatural story.

Slim pickings at the library make for one desperate reader here...

Living on the Edge by Shannon K. Butcher
This one's closest claim to supernatural status is that the author's husband is Jim Butcher, author of the fabulous Harry Dresden wizard series. I guess Shannon's writing is ok as far as the romance-thriller genre goes, if you like that sort of thing. Sloane is the female heroine of this novel. She's tough and trained as a paramilitary body-guard. She falls for Lucas, a tough and handsome ex-soldier. Together they take down an evil Columbian drug lord while saving the life of one of Sloane's best friends. Lots of guns, violence, blood, and explicit sex in this one. Uh huh.

Walking Dead by Greg Rucka
Out of all the books in this group this one was the best and it wasn't even a supernatural one. The monsters in this novel were all too human and all too believably evil. In fact, this novel was so upsetting that it really affected me for days afterwards, and even kept me awake with the lights on the night that I read it.

Atticus Kodiak and his wife Alena Cizkova have retired from their former (very dangerous) professions to hide out in a tiny little town in the former USSR. All they want is to live the rest of their lives together in peace and safety. Unfortunately as long as you are human and living with other human beings,  there is no where you can go to escape the evil of mankind.

Atticus and Alena are drawn into the world of human sex trafficking when the daughter of their neighbor is kidnapped and the rest of her family slaughtered.  Atticus goes on a long journey around the world to track down the 14 year old girl, exposing an intricate network of ruthless human exploitation, deep suffering, violence, greed and corruption.

This is one fabulously researched and written novel about a horrifying reality and the sort of true evil that people are capable of. I will be on the look out for more novels by this author even though he does not write within my usual preferred genre.

After reading that, who needs vampires and zombies? Me.  That's who.
I will be on the lookout for some new novels of my favorite genre soon.
Wish me better novel hunting luck than I had this last time!

The other thing I've learned is that if I don't make any reading notes about what I'm reading before I return the books from the library, I quickly forget what the books were about unless they were truly spectacular - such as what has happened with the last list of books I mentioned in the previous post, but did not get around to writing anything about. :-(

Lesson learned.

Recent Reads - quick post

Here's a list of recent reads that I haven't reviewed yet
but have to return to the library!

Dead Streets by Tim Waggoner
- An unusual sort of zombie with his own free will, soul, and consciousness fights crime in the Underworld with his half vampire lover at his sort of not completely decaying side. Talk about 'til undeath do us part...or some such forever romantic nonsense...

Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning
- Bad FAE! Hooray! Not silly useless cherubic fairies.
I just hate it when I pick up a book, love the story and the characters but something like the third or fourth book into the series already). (More later. )

The Messenger by Jan Burke - Immortal guy who can talk to the recently dying meets female soul mate destined to share his powers and abilities and together they defeat a big bad. Nice cemetery dogs.

Ghost Ship by P.J. Alderman - Murder mystery with someone who can talk to ghosts. Ho Hum.

Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton - Better than some recent writing. (More later. )

Karavans by Jennifer Roberson - Ok.

Witch and Wizard by James Patterson - Young Adult. Great subversiveness.

A Brush of Darkness by Allison Pang - (more later)

Must run to library now to return books before I get more fines...and get new books out to read of course.

Multi-catch-up summary list

Once again I've read a bunch of books and fallen behind on writing about them. None of them were truly outstanding or made a very deep impression on me. Most were just mildly entertaining - which explains why two of them were books I'd already read, and forgotten that I'd read. So this will be a short form catch up post summing up the bare bones of what I've read recently.

* Unusual Suspects ed. Dana Stabelow

Mixture of supernatural/mystery short stories by various authors. Not terribly exciting for me.

* Born of Ice by Sherrilyn Kenyon

I actually liked this one. It had some shades of Joss Whedon's Firefly to it, kinda sorta.

* Death Spiral by James W. Nichol

A WW II war vet comes home with an uncanny ability to discover "who done it" and why. And somehow he seems to be at the center of all sorts of murderous activity that suddenly breaks out in the sleepy village he has come home to. Quite entertaining. Canadian too eh. ;-)

* Dragon Mage by Norton and Rabe

An adolescent's book, but nevertheless, well written, full of fun and fantasy, ancient Babylon, and Dragons.

* Trick of the Light by Rob Thurman

I had forgotten that I had read this book a few years ago. I liked the main female protagonist, a kickass supernatural Trickster character slash bar owner, but I wasn't bored or desperate enough for entertainment to read it again so I guess I didn't like it *that* much. However, if I found another one of her books with the same character in it but a different story, I'd probably read it for fun.

* Seventh Witch by Shirley Damsgaard

Another book I had already read a few years ago. This one is almost a "cosy" supernatural mystery. It's ok. I definitely didn't like it enough to read it again once I'd realized I'd already read it.

* The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This is a post-apocalyptic novel following the struggles of a father and son to survive when civilization is destroyed. It's very dark, and it certainly suits my mood and outlook on the dismal future of the human race and our ongoing destruction of the planet at the moment.

Ghost Shadow by Heather Graham

This story is barely worth a mention in my opinion. It's typical American surface writing - New York Times bestselling fare, a completely predictable formulaic murder mystery with a love interest, and a woman with a gift for seeing ghosts who help her solve the crime/s. Ho hum, dee dum. Toss.

The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn

This is a lovely little gem of a story about a young wizard in training.
Aubrey is the pure of heart hero who is tested by darkness and corruption.

His most dangerous adversary is also his teacher - the Shape-Changer.
His forbidden love is his teacher's wife - who is not quite human, although she appears to be on the surface.

At stake is the choice to become a person of power, and to choose what to do with that power. Will Aubrey choose to emulate his teacher and become the type of wizard who lusts for power and control at the price of the suffering and oppression of those he has under his control, or will Aubrey use his power to to restore balance and freedom to those he could have power over?

As I said, it's a delightful little gem for an evening's worth of reading.

Chalice by Robin McKinley - and a reflection on modern society

I loved the world that Robin McKinley creates in this book. It is a world where the land and all creatures are intimately linked to the human beings who live upon it and vice versa. The humans are literally the caretakers of the elements, the woods, the animals, the bees and so on. The land is divided up into smaller parcels called demesne, and everyone has a place and a role to play in keeping the balance. Everything and everyone is interconnected in a delicate yet strong living web of life. When the balance is upset by some human flaw in character and behavior this has dire consequences on the environment and all of it's inhabitants.

Enter a woman who had humble beginnings as a woodskeeper and a beekeeper. The landsense choses her as the new "Chalice" which is one of the most powerful positions a woman can hold in a demesne. She has had no training or apprenticeship and comes to the job in a demesne which has been neglected and abused by it's former Master who died suddenly in a fire. The land is suffering. The people are suffering. The former Master's brother who was apprenticed to become a priest of the Fire element is brought back to take up the role of Master, but he is poorly suited to the job (at first), being almost completely changed into a fire elemental himself. Then in their weakness, they must face a threat from the arrogant and power hungry Overlord and a pet outsider he proposes to replace the blood related Master with.

The story of how these two people must go through huge transformations and trials in order to save their demesne and people is a fascinating one, which drew my imagination and empathy in and caught me fast. And, I couldn't help wishing that our world was more like this one - where the priority and responsibility of keeping a healthy balance in all elements, land, resources, and living creatures was held higher than anything else.

If only humans had the "land-sense" - an awareness of, and sensitivity to the land and it's creatures that they lived upon, maybe we wouldn't be in the horrible trouble that we are in right now. Instead we have the Japanese dumping millions of tons of nuclear contaminated water into the oceans over who knows long a period of time? The radiation that has travelled in the air streams across the globe has so far reached from the West to the East coast of North America. Even where I live, I know that radiation contaminated rain has already fallen. It may be "low" levels at the moment, but radiation is radiation, and there is no end in sight to the poisonous emissions issuing from the devastated Fukushima Nuclear site. Over time it will accumulate. Over time, different kinds of radiation, with different half-lives and potencies will emerge from the site and gradually and inexorably pollute the earth, air and water for generations to come.

We depend upon the Sun for our lives, for the growth of plants and so on. But if the Sun itself were to suddenly visit the Earth, it would kill all of us, and everything on the planet. Balance. Proper time and place. Life is a delicate thing. Most humans are so arrogant, (like the Overlord and his outlander usurper wanting to supplant the ones who have the natural land sense and care for the land.) we think we can continue to rape, pillage, plunder the earth and all of it's denizens, and live our artificial lives which are in complete disharmony and imbalance with everything else, including ourselves with no consequence. But, like in Chalice, everything really is interconnected, earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. What happens on one corner of the Earth will eventually affect the other areas of the Earth.

It's not just the radiation which is worrying me. There are so many other things that worry me which human beings in power are responsible for. There are Genetically Modified crops and other organisms. There are cloned animals. There is the over dependence upon fossil fuels. The latest thing seems to be silver nanoparticles which are destroying essential microbes and plants and who knows what else as they've just started to study their effects... There is Big Science, Big Pharma and a powerful Western dominated mono-medical industry that I simply do not trust or respect, which in turn does not respect or acknowledge alternative or more natural forms of health management. Big bloated and falsely inflated Money. Big Government. Big Military and War. Poverty. Human Trafficking and Slavery. Exploitation and Abuse of all kinds. I could go on and on...but the point is, the direction in which we are headed is, I fear the wrong direction, and I find it hard to live my brief little life as a human being on this planet and feel any sense of peace or harmony or purpose in relation to the human societies I see around me. I'm very troubled by all of this. My heart feels heavy. My spirit is saddened. I'm ashamed of my fellow human beings. I do the best that I can with my little life. I exercise and try to make healthy environmentally conscious food choices. I live a very modest life with the smallest carbon footprint I can make. But, I know that this little bit that I do is not enough. I think that ultimately the human race is going to kill itself and everything around it will suffer and be destroyed along with us.

Over the last couple of weeks since Fukushima, I kept thinking about the "Resident Evil" movie series. The Umbrella Corporation is the source of a powerful biohazard virus which either turns people into flesh devouring mindless zombies, or causes unpredictable, usually horrifying mutations in living creatures. Alice is the one rarest of all exception - she bonds with the T-virus and gains super-powers which the Umbrella Corporation lusts to own and control and use for its own power and profit.

For the first time I began to think of zombies as more than the mindless, disgusting, ravening creatures of horror film I have always seen them as. I began to see them as metaphors for the large majority of humans who mindlessly and selfishly consume everything advertised to them as desirable, as they scramble just to exist (and be "successful") within the artificial structures and machinery of society created for (and by) them. And, the world in Resident Evil which dries up and becomes mostly dead from the effects of the T-virus is the dead and destroyed world which I see in our future.

No wonder I escape into the type of books that I do. They offer alternative realities in which all of these issues can be explored and examined and experimented with. When bad things happen in each of my dark dystopian books it is a small catharsis for me to mourn the pain, the violence and bloodshed, the myriad of evils, corruptions and injustices, the losses, disasters, and horrors I see happening all around me every day. Sometimes "good" and balance wins. Sometimes, just like in life, "bad" and imbalance wins.

Neil Gaiman's Blog about Diana Wynne Jones

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/03/being-alive.html

I love Neil Gaiman's work.

I just read his blog about Diana Wynne Jones dying of cancer and it made me cry. It's a lovely tribute to her.

Jeepers I've been in a dark mood lately.

The Man With The Golden Torc by Simon R. Green

So it's the Super Moon - the closest Full Moon we've had to the earth in 20 years. It's nearly the Spring Equinox, a time of year which is supposed to herald the return of new life, and the beginning of a new year of growth and goodness. However, we have recently had the horrific Tsunami, Earthquake, and resultant Nuclear Meltdown disaster in Japan, and war, violence, death, and destruction going on all over the world. We are all so in need of a hero and some hope right now. I don't feel full of optimism at the moment. In fact I am feeling downright dark at the moment and this story suits my mood and nature perfectly right now. 


The Man With the Golden Torc, is about a heroic guy who is born into a famous and powerful family (The Droods aka Druids) of what he believes to be heroes, people who supposedly fight for the "right". He himself has always been a bit of a loner, and a bit of a rebel, but one with a good heart, not one who is easily seduced into doing "wrong". 


His cover name in the outside world is "Shaman Bond". I love this name of his because it's a nod to both the magickal aspects to the story, and a nod to the every day spy-technical aspects to the story. 


Not far into the story our hero cum rebel begins to discover that not all is as it seems, even for himself - a man of the "Twilight", a person living not quite in and not quite outside of either the supernatural or the every day worlds, and someone who is not completely inside nor outside of the Drood family as well. 


Can I ever relate to his liminal status! I love this character. He could be my male twin. 


Another character which I love in this story is Girl Flower. Girl Flower is a nod to the Welsh myth of Bloddeuwedd . As anyone who knows me, and has kept up with my blog is aware, I have a particular fondness for owls. Bloddeuwedd" is Welsh for "owl". 


The hero of the Welsh tale Lleu Llaw Gyffes is cursed by his mother to never marry a human wife. Well this doesn't seem fair does it? Every man has to have a woman all his very own right? Hmmmm... Oh that wicked driving human need to own and possess and control...


To circumvent this seemingly unreasonable curse two magicians Math and Gwydion take the flowers of the oak, broom, and meadowsweet to create the most beautiful maiden ever known to be Lleu Llaw Gyffes' wife. However, while he is away, she has an affair with the anti-hero Gronw Pebr and the two create a plan to murder Lleu. 


Lleu is another one of these twilight persons. He cannot be killed as long as he is fully in one or another place or time or situation. He can only be killed when he is somewhere/somewhen inbetween. (e.g. he can only be killed at dusk, wrapped in a net with one foot on a cauldron and one on a goat and with a spear forged for a year during the hours when everyone is at mass.) 


His wife shares this information with her lover and he tries to kill Lleu. The murder is not quite successful, and when Lleu returns, he transforms his unfaithful wife into an owl and curses her: 

Blodeuwedd meets Gronw.

“

You will not dare to show your face ever again in the light of day ever again, and that will be because of enmity between you and all other birds. It will be in their nature to harass you and despise you wherever they find you. And you will not lose your name - that will always be "Bloddeuwedd (Flower-face)."[1]

”

I've always thought this was a grossly unfair story to burden owls with. I think owls are lovely birds. However, it is true that they are mistrusted and feared in many cultures, being associated with death, darkness, ghosts, curses, and ye wicked old witchcraft. Le Sigh. Poor things.


Anyhow back to our deliciously Jungian story. For some mysterious reason our hero, Shaman Bond is driven out of the Drood Family by the Matriarch and the entire world is given license to hunt him down. 


He has to take refuge in the underbelly of British civilization, with all the criminals, and he even has to go delving into the stinking city sewers for help and answers. Along the way, having to enlist help from the "dark side", he attracts a small band of helpers including Mr. Stab (Jack the Ripper), Molly Metcalf the wild witch, and Girl Flower (who is described as an elemental who can manifest as either a beautiful girl made of lovely flowers or a wickedly violent and murderous female made of owls talons). 


Underground in the sewers Girl Flower takes a decimated rat's body and drops it into her bodice. 


"Poor little ratty."


"Oh ick." said Molly.


"I am flowers darling." Girl Flower said stubbornly." And all dead things are as compost to my pretty petals." She slipped the rat carcass inside the front of her dress, and it immediately disappeared. 


Molly looked at me. "Think about that the next time she invites you to unbutton her blouse." 


I looked determinedly in another direction. "If she starts coughing up owl pellets, she's going back." 


(Green p. 171)


(I'm liking this Girl more and more all the time by the way. )


Probably one of my most favorite parts of the story involves Mr. Stab revealing one of his underground super secret stashes of mutilated dead women's bodies posed around a Victorian table. Girl Flower examines the scene and she...


"floated prettily around the room, bending over withered shoulders to stare into corrupt faces, humming a happy song to herself. "You shouldn't have let this get to you darlings. All living things have their roots in dead things. It's the way of the world." She slipped a hand inside her dress and frowned prettily for a moment, and when she brought her hand out again it was piled high with seeds. She walked up and down both sides of the long table dropping a few seeds into the gaping mouths and empty eye sockets of every corpse. "Let new life bloom," she said. "It's nature's way." 


Mr. Stab looked at her, and Girl Flower smiled happily back at him, entirely unafraid. And the man who was once called Jack by a whole horrified city nodded slowly. 


"Perhaps I'll come back, in some future time," he said. "To see what strange new life has blossomed here." 


I didn't kill him. As an agent in the field, you learn that sometimes you have to settle for little victories.


(Green p 174)


So. The novel is basically about the ambiguity of human nature and it's overwhelming selfish drive for power and control. Right and wrong, day and night, good and evil, life and death...things are not always so...black and white. Sometimes they are more grey, inbetweenish, and twilighty...and I have always identified myself as existing in that place so the novel suits me just fine. 


I'm distinctly unhappy with the human race tonight. More-so than usual. I've never been happy with the way it runs its affairs. I don't trust any politicians or power systems in the world. I despise the way humanity rapes and pillages, plunders and exploits, destroys and poisons the world, and tramples pettily upon pretty much anything beautiful, valuable, vulnerable and natural that it cannot patent, possess, control, and make money off of. 


As a Pagan, as a Witch. as a Woman, I'm supposed to be celebrating the Full Moon tonight. I'm supposed to be celebrating the Spring Equinox in a few days. How am I supposed to do that when I look around me and the whole world is in major upheaval: War, Corruption, Oppression, Pollution, Global Warming, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Nuclear Meltdown...and political lie after lie after lie...


How long will we last to safely breath the air, drink the water, eat from the earth, and turn our faces to the sun after all that we have done, and when we reap what we have sown? What blooms will bloom this Spring and what fruits will ripen this Summer? What harvest will we see this coming Fall? And what will our Nuclear Winter be like?  



"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-- William Butler Yeats, January 1919"



My feeling tonight is incredibly dark, dismal and dim -- dark enough to
quote a famous biblical phrase which is terribly unlike me. 
I feel that ultimately we shall "Reap the Whirlwind" and that we will have deserved it. 
 "They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind"
This quote comes from the Book of Hosea in the Hebrew Bible. 
It was used by Bomber Harris in response to the Blitz of 1940.


I know human beings are constantly predicting doom and gloom, apocalypse
and so on, but really, how often do we have to @#$% things up before we don't
get any more second and third chances? How far do we have to go before we've
gone past the point of no return? We never learn from history. We are all so bloody
arrogant and selfish. 


Forgive me or not, I really don't care, but I'm distinctly identifying with the view points of Mr. Stab and Girl Flower right now. 


Ah well. That truly is Mother Nature isn't it. That which is meant to die and decay will. That which is meant to live will be born out of death. 


Runa (aka Bloddeuwedd) gives Four Talons to Simon R. Green and The Man With the Golden Torc. 


Sleep well little earth. I'm a pissed off witch tonight. So I'm letting go, and going with the flow. I'm thinking about Black Holes and imploding and exploding galaxies right now. Stars being born and stars dying. We are dust on the feet of the dancing Universe. Lord Shiva is dancing with the Goddess Kali.  

Waking The Witch by Kelley Armstrong

I'm rather fond of this Canadian author partially because she lives in Ontario (my home province), and she writes decent quality supernatural thriller/detective novels with convincing kick a$$ strong female leads. I am always confident that when I pick up a book by her, I am going to be entertained and so far, I have not been disappointed.

This particular Otherworld novel features young Savannah Levine as the main female character. At 21, little Savannah is growing up into a proper good-bad witch/sorceress! And she's ready to take on the detecting tradition of her guardians Paige and Lucas herself - with just a little back up from a couple of friends of course.

I have to admit that this one really kept me guessing right to the very end, although I did start suspecting just one of the many bad "guys" sprinkled into the plot a little earlier on.

Overall it was a fun read for an non-stop rainy day. Just WHEN *is* it going to stop raining anyway? I am just going to have to start reading another library book to while away the evening hours...

Eeny meeny miny mo, which book is the next to go?

A Bad, Bad Girl

I've been a bad, bad girl. I've been reading, but neglecting to write up any reviews. As a result I've totally lost track of how many books I've read and liked (or not liked) since my last entry. :-(

Right now I've just got two already read books left out of my latest stack of novels that I haven't returned to the library yet. They are:
Indigo Springs by A.M. Dellamonica
Blood and Ice by Robert Masello

I also have a stack of brand new library books which I haven't read yet.
They are:
Waking the Witch by Kelley Armstrong
The Great Tree of Avalon by T.A. Barron
The Man with the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green
Ghost Shadow by Heather Graham
Chalice by Robin McKinley
The Shape Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn

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Blood and Ice was a vampire story. Basically two British vampire lovers get chained together and thrown overboard by a hostile nautical crew near the South Pole in the last century and are frozen solid until modern day South Pole researchers find them, bring them up, thaw them, and then have to deal with the consequences. An interesting setting, full of fascinating tidbits about what the flora and fauna of the South Pole is like, and historical data as well. Obviously a lot of research work was done to write this book.

Indigo Springs was a dark fantasy story filled with magickal forces, magickal creatures, magickal transformations, and the eternal battle between human good and evil. There were some interesting character developments in this novel. I particularly liked the main female character Astrid who is quite complex and conflicted in many ways and on many levels, including her bisexuality. Very imaginative and creative. Not just your average night of simple entertainment novel. I would read more of her work if I could get my hands on it. A.M. Dellamonica's (who by the way is a Canadian gal living in B.C. with her wife Kelly Robson) next novel in progress is called The Wintergirls. I will be keeping an eye out for it.

Ok. "It is a dark and stormy night". Environment Canada has just issued a heavy rain warning. Sounds like the perfect night to dig my head deep into a nice juicy book. Waking The Witch is my first choice of course!

Edge by Thomas Blackthorne

Truly a keeper! 4 Talons!

It's not often that I am blown away by a novel anymore. I read so much, so often, that I take in an incredible amount of fiction on a regular basis. Most of what I read is enjoyable entertainment to me, and it helps me to pass the time.

However, every once in a while a novel comes along that really grips my imagination and truly engages every part of me on multiple levels. Edge by Thomas Blackthorne is one of those rarities.

To begin with I should introduce the author. Taken from the back of the book: Thomas Blackthorne is a pseudonym of a British science fiction novelist named John Meany. John Meany has written To Hold Infinity, the Nulapeiron sequence, Bone Song, Dark Blood and The Ragnarok Trilogy. His writing has been shortlisted  for the British Science Fiction Award, won the Independent Publishers Best Novel Award in SF/Fantasy, and won the Daily Telegraph Books of the Year.

Meany has been a teacher of business analysis, and software engineering on three continents. He is also a black belt in shotokan karate, and has cross trained in other (martial) arts. He is also a trained hypnotherapist. His short bio makes him sound like a man of many talents, intelligence, and personal discipline. For a somewhat nerdy gal with a bit of a background in martial arts like me, he sounds like a rather "hawt" gentleman. ;-) To see what I mean, read his more complete bio on his website: http://www.johnmeaney.com/bio.html

Edge is a science fiction novel that is set on Earth, not too far in the future. It's a recognizable Earth, just with slightly more advanced technology, and logically progressed political and economic situations from what presently exist today. It's as if the author has taken what exists to the known world today and simply pushed the clock forward, imagining the world as it might become if everything goes along just as it very easily could.

First of all, I love that it's set mainly in Britain, as I'm quite tired of the predominance of novels that are set in the same old, self-centric USA. Secondly I fell in love with the two central characters, the hero and heroine, Josh and Suzanne.

Josh Cumberland is a fascinating man - to me at least. He is a "retired" military man with very specialized training in combat and computer technology. He no longer really works for any one government, but is part of an elite team that trains other people for money.

Suzanne Duchesne is a beautiful, intelligent French born black woman who is a highly trained hypnotherapist. Her techniques and abilities to control and manipulate the human mind make Spock look like a Neanderthal.

Together they make one heck of a team. Then, add to the mix a bunch of Josh's hi-tech special forces "Ghost Force" buddies and you've got a miniature army capable of nearly anything...

In this novel they have two objectives.
1) Find and safely retrieve the young runaway son of a powerful British tycoon.
2) Expose and topple the highly corrupt people at the apex of the British government who are profiting from using the living bodies of poor young people as factories to create and farm new drugs in "Virapharm labs".

I particularly appreciated the extreme mental and physical disciplines that the protagonists immersed themselves in and exercised throughout the novel. Yes, there was a an extreme amount of violence involved (the legalized popularized public knife dueling is just a part of it), but having studied and practiced Jiujitsu myself at a younger age, I was able to relate to the high art and science of training your mind and body to survive under extreme conditions.

In other events which occur in the book, I could also recognize my own present life concerns and anxieties about how the US government is continuing to devolve into religious right wing extremism and fanaticism. When so much power is in the hands of people who are headed in such a frightening direction, the rest of the world really should sit up and take notice and be worried...

Anyway, I was riveted right from the start, all the way to the finish of this book, and when it ended, I nearly couldn't stand it, and I was already jonesing for more. It had such an impact on me that I literally do not want to return this book to the library. I've already renewed it once -- just because. It's almost like I can hold the characters in my hand and connect with them that way, through the book. Weird huh? Yeah, I guess I'm weird. :-)

Point, the sequel to this novel is already in the works, and hopefully it will be available for purchase ASAP!

Thomas Blackthorne aka John Meaney can be found at www.johnmeaney.com

He is one of those authors who I find so inspiring, that he makes me imagine all over again that maybe, just maybe, I could turn all of my own quirky inner ideas into a book/s someday. I'll be reading along and start going, "Oh hey, I recognize that thought/concept/philosophy/perception of the world! I can really relate on a very personal level!"  and "Oh, yeah, I love that character - he/she's something like what I've imagined before!" or "Gosh if these ideas and these characters and this writing can be successful...could it be possible for me as well?" And so on...but...sigh...I am most likely doomed to forever be a reader, not a writer...

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane

I thought this novel was really fresh, and refreshing. It had a strong and interesting female lead character in Chess Putnam, a witch, brave ghost hunter, and drug addict. It had a world made new by the rise of angry, deadly ghosts which need to be kept under control by a new kind of religion - one which relies upon the existence of violent spirits and the need to control them for the safety of the living. And of course there are the black magick users who want to challenge those in power, drug lords and rival gangs, and the push pull  attraction repulsion between Chess and two very different men. It made me want to read the next one in the series just to find out what happens to Chess next...I cared about her, and that made the reading good.

Apocalypse of the Dead by Joe McKinney

Despite the fact that novels about vampires and zombies are both about death and undeath, they approach mortality and immortality in very different ways. Novels about zombies have different kinds of horrors and fears, and explore different physical, spiritual, psychological and emotional states. There is nothing remotely sexy and seductive about obviously decaying corpses stumbling mindlessly about driven by an implacable desire to rip, rend and tear living human flesh with filthy fingernails and blunt human teeth teeming with zombie plague bacteria with one purpose only - to spread the disease.

A biological apocalypse brought about by an outbreak of zombies raises issues of sheer survival. What happens if civilization as we know it breaks down suddenly, quickly, violently, and irrevocably? Who will survive? How? Why? For how long? What qualities does it take for people to survive such an event? What sorts of leaders and followers will emerge? When the old order breaks down, what sort of new order will rise to takes it's place? What can we believe in - government? religion? science? Who can we place our trust in when anyone might become infected, and new enemies might arise at any time, and from familiar faces? When the body arises from the dead, what survives, if anything of the person or spirit or spark which once inhabited and animated that body? Is there anything at all after the death of the body? Are we any more or less than hunks of blood and flesh and brain synapses firing?

These were some of the issues raised while I read this novel. I thought it was well written and entertaining, and definitely disturbing.

American Gothic by Michael Romkey

This novel crosses generations from 1863 to the present. It examines addictions to drugs, alcohol, violence, power, and blood. It probes the pains of love and loss, depression, and the meaning or meaninglessness of life and death. And it uses the theme of the vampire to explore what it means to be monstrously monstrous, monstrously human, humanely monstrous, and what can be found to be redeeming in humanity. The writing weaves in and out, meandering through time and places and lives in a hypnotic and compelling way. I was surprised that I enjoyed reading it as much as I did. I wasn't expecting that when I started out.

Night Tides by Alex Prentiss

This book was a lot more centered around sex and sensuality than most of the books I read. However, the sex and sensuality was core to the story, and it had an unusual spiritual layer to it as well which made it all the more interesting.

The lead female character has an incredibly intimate relationship with the Native spirits of the Madison, Wisconsin lakes she lives near. She communes with them sexually, but they also help her with an ongoing mystery involving beautiful young college girls being abducted.

I enjoyed the developing relationship she had going with the lead male character, but of course it had to run into it's challenges which will be explored in the next novel.

An entertaining and intriguing read to while away an evening.

Insomniac Reader's Catch up Post

Ok. I have insomnia. I've given up and made some decaf green chai tea and decided it was time for me to catch up on my reading blog.

Things didn't work out like I expected with the werewolf books (see "Wolf's Bluff). I went to my local library to order them (reserve them) but discovered to my disappointment that my library doesn't bother to catalogue their paperbacks and so if I want to read the previous two books in the series I'll have to get them from Amazon.

So, to satisfy my insatiable reader's craving I had to settle for whatever dark urban fantasy, horror, etc. books I could find on the library shelves at the time. Since I last made an entry here I have read:

Night Tides by Alex Prentiss
American Gothic by Michael Romkey
Apocalypse of the Dead by Joe McKinney
Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane

Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs
(This was another great book by Briggs. I always love Patricia Briggs for a great evening of reading entertainment)
and
Dead Beat by Jim Butcher (Again, Jim Butcher is always a go-to guy for a great night of reading. He's a guy who never lets me down! ;-) )

More to follow...