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.
