Midnight Alley Fiction Review
By Flames | May 8, 2008
In the third installment of the ongoing “Morganville Vampires” series, not-quite-seventeen year old Claire has opened a whole new can of worms: she’s agreed to work for the Founder, Amelie, an ancient vampire who has, for some reason been sticking up for her since she came to Morganville. It seems a simple enough exchange at first: Protection (with a capital P) for herself and her friends by promising her obedience. Better yet, her first task is taking advanced classes, and she finds herself with a scholarship to boot. But not all of those classes are the safe, classroom kind: she has an independent study with Myrnin, an old vampire who is brilliant, but seems on the edge of losing it.
Review by Alana Abott
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Witch Fire (Elemental Witches, Book 1) Review
By Flames | May 7, 2008
The line between good and evil is clearly drawn in the first Elemental Witches novel. Coven = good. Duskoff Cabal = evil. Mira Hoskins doesn’t know she’s an air witch until there’s a home invasion, where she’s rescued/kidnapped by fire witch Jack McAllister who claims he’s hiding her away for her own good. Jack trains Mira to use her magick until the time comes to move to the Coven in Chicago.
Review by Tez Miller
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Hidden Fiction Review
By Flames | May 6, 2008
In 2037 there will be an outbreak (a plague, maybe) that kills a whole lot of people. Don’t say I never warned you.
Excluding the prologue, this novel takes place in 2093. The world is now divided into four parts: the Northern Waste, the Equatorial Band, Africa and the Southern Hemisphere. Born in a laboratory in the icy Northern Waste, Tatiana is now free. But there’s something seriously screwed with her genes, clearly evident when she slices off a bloke’s hand with no weapons other than her own hands.
Review by Tez Miller.
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The Host Fiction Review
By Flames | May 1, 2008
Welcome to the future, where souls have the options of many planets and species to inhabit. The souls have invaded Earth, creating a utopian society where violence doesn’t happen and money is not an issue. Wanderer is inserted into host Melanie Stryder, after a mighty struggle to avoid the souls. Usually the host fades, though their body is well and truly active controlled by the soul. Mel remains fighting furious, but to reach common goals she has to work together and get along with Wanderer, nicknamed Wanda.
Review by Tez Miller
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The Dead Girls’ Dance Fiction Review
By Flames | April 30, 2008
The Dead Girls’ Dance is not a stand-alone novel. A reader new to the series (like me) can figure out what’s going on with no problem–but the story doesn’t begin here. Nor does it end here. The conclusion leads straight into Morganville Vampires Book Three (which I’ll be reviewing in the near future). Claire has to choose how best to deal with being wanted by vampires, and how best to gain the protection she and her friends desperately need to survive–how she makes that decision and the consequences of her choice are likely to be the plot of the third entry in the series. As a series book, the story is compelling, the characters sympathetic (even some of the villains), and the world that Caine has drawn is easy to sink into, if not pleasant. Her world is one where monsters aren’t just vampires, but humans, where it’s not safe to be out after dark, and where demons lay in wait in dark alleys.
Review by Alana Abbott
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Happy Hour of the Damned Fiction Review
By Flames | April 24, 2008
You’ve seen it before: authors blurbing other books, claiming ‘I wish I’d written this’. Seems kind of hyperbolic, I know. But then I experienced it. This 300-something-page tome shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did to read. This is my fault because as I started reading, mood-killers kicked in: jealousy, envy and that dreadful thing that’s summed up as ‘emo’. I did not want to feel this way, so for the first half of the book I read only in short sessions. For the uninitiated, I’m only an occasional fiction writer. Still, Mark Henry’s writing is so all-encompassingly engaging that I started hating my work and myself, lalala (emo).
Review by Tez Miller
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Magic Burns Fiction Review
By Flames | April 19, 2008
I love the world-building. Atlanta has two stages in time – tech (when life is as we know it) and magic. But the transitions between the two are getting faster, and Celtic mythology comes to life. (That sounds vague, I know, but I didn’t really understand it.)
Kate Daniels (whose father is supposedly Russian, but you wouldn’t know it from her surname) still has her almighty saber Slayer, but also has a new companion: teenager Julie, whose wannabe witch mother is missing.
Review by Tez Miller
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Claimed by Shadow Fiction Review
By Matt-M-McElroy | April 18, 2008
This is book two of series, and admittedly I had not read Touch the Dark. I was hoping that there would be enough context to bring me into the story and setting without feeling lost. Although Ms. Chance does offer a few lines here and there of Cassie talking about past events, I still felt a little lost. Not huge deal though because the book starts off with plenty of action. Even with me not knowing exactly who some of the characters are…things were certainly interesting. Cassie is looking for a little help in her ongoing feud with some of the vampires. She is hanging out at a supernatural brothel and causing a little bit of trouble along the way.
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Tantalize Fiction Review
By Flames | April 17, 2008
When I picked up Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith, I was expecting something along the lines of Stephanie Meyers’s Twilight. Though I’m not sure where I got that impression, I quickly discovered that, while Tantalize and Twilight may both feature stories of star-crossed love and potentially doomed relationships, Tantalize doesn’t make the love story its center. Instead, it focuses on a sort of coming-of-age for Quincie, a heroine named after the Texan vampire hunter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Quincie is a strong young woman who, by the beginning of the story, has already had to cope with the deaths of her parents. She is going to inherit the family restaurant when she turns eighteen, but until then, she shares responsibilities for running it with her uncle. Because business has been bad, her uncle formed a plan to increase sales by remodeling their traditional Italian eatery to have a vampiric theme, still keeping the best of Italian dishes while serving the would-be vampire crowd, which happens to include his girlfriend.
Review by Alana Abbott
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Eat the Dark Fiction Review
By Flames | April 15, 2008
I had high hopes for this book. The author is a pal of one of my favorites, Mr Mark Henry. And he’s an MRI tech. That latter factor particularly perked me because I love medical thrillers, and people with medical qualifications are smart, and I like to associate with those more intelligent than I. I was thinking Mr Schreiber would be my kind of writer, a male Tess Gerritsen - and it certainly helped that the aforementioned Ms Gerritsen had a blurb right on the front cover.
Review by Tez Miller
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Succubus Blues Fiction Review
By Flames | April 14, 2008
Georgina Kincaid just isn’t into her job. Sure, living off of the life energies of men she seduced used to be fun centuries ago, but now bringing good men down just makes her feel guilty. Is it too much for a succubus to ask to have just one worthwhile relationship in her immortal life? But fulfilling her dream of meeting the right man (who she won’t kill by sleeping with him) has to be put on hold when several minor immortals in the Seattle community are killed or murdered.
Review by Alana Abbott
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The Reincarnationist Fiction Review
By Flames | April 13, 2008
So what happens when you die: become a vampire, zombie or ghost? Or do you get reincarnated, no matter how many years later?
A novel that’s been years in the making, the author takes us to contemporary Italy, where photojournalist Josh Ryder - who works for the Phoenix Foundation, which researches children’s past life regressions - visits an archaeological dig. Josh has regressed before, but now the memory lurches are happening more often and in more detail. In Ancient Rome, he was Julius, who had an affair with Vestal Virgin Sabina, whose punishment was to be buried alive.
Review by Tez Miller
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Prom Dates from Hell Fiction Review
By Flames | April 10, 2008
For those of us who were geeks in high school, comparing prom to hell wasn’t much of a stretch. The same can absolutely be said of Maggie Quinn, who has no intention of getting conned into going to prom. She doesn’t have a boyfriend, so that’s not a concern, and her stalwart friends have mocked the dance as much as she has in the past. But as the dance nears, and supernatural danger strikes, all of Maggie’s plans are scattered. Welcome to Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Prom Dates from Hell.
Review by Alana Abbott
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Unleashed Fiction Review
By Flames | April 9, 2008
Kristopher Reisz’s Unleashed sheds light on the steel city of Birmingham, with its cultural history and blue-collar community. Daniel Morning’s parents are far from rich: they struggle to make ends meet whilst doing everything they can to insure that Daniel and his brothers have a better future…even if it means cheating to get into an Ivy League college.
Review by Tez Miller
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Plague of the Dead 2: Thunder & Ashes Fiction Review
By Flames | April 8, 2008
I’ll have to post something of a caveat up front: I’ve never read the first installment of the Morningstar Saga, Plague of the Dead. That will have to change pretty soon though, considering the quality of Thunder & Ashes.
The zombie apocalypse has come and gone, and a handful of survivors–some of them ex-military, and one a brilliant female scientist–are fighting to find a cure that will save the world. Yes, the plot isn’t exactly original, but the quality of the writing and the characters manage to elevate Thunder & Ashes above most novels that share this popular plot.
Review by Leah Clarke
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Dead to Me Fiction Review
By Flames | April 7, 2008
In Dead to Me, reformed petty-crime naughty boy and psychometrist Simon Canderous (whose surname probably means something, but I haven’t checked the dictionary yet) works for New York’s Department of Extraordinary Affairs. Psychometry made me think of Kim Wilkins’s Gina Champion series, and the government made me think of Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan series. But Anton Strout’s Simon Canderous is neither a teenage girl nor a political adviser (and not Australian, for that matter).
Review by Tez Miller
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Halfway to the Grave Fiction Review
By Flames | April 4, 2008
Cat Crawfield would love to kill her father. Literally. After raping her mother, he took off, leaving Cat as a reminder of the evening. Oh, and he’s a vampire, making Cat a weird sort of hybrid: living with but a vampire’s strength and speed. So as a way to get even, she starts hunting vamps, picking them up at clubs and staking them for all they’re worth. Every time she does it, there’s one less monster in the world. But then she meets Bones, a vampire far stronger than any she’s met before. When he threatens to kill her unless she studies under him, she challenges him to a duel of sorts–as the loser, she is forced to train with him, learning to be a better, more effective vampire hunter, ready to take on some of the big marks.
Review by Alana Abbott
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Hell’s Belles - Hell on Earth (Book 1) Fiction Review
By Flames | April 3, 2008
A few months ago I read the first three chapters of Jackie Kessler’s Hell’s Belles, but had to put it aside when I got caught up in library books and their due dates. My sieve of a memory left me doubtful of how well I could remember these opening stages when I picked the book up again the other day.
I needn’t have worried. I’m the first to admit that I’m very skeptical. Just because something is a best seller, or comes with gushy fangirlies, that doesn’t mean that it’ll automatically appeal to everyone. But I’m happy to report that this novel did appeal to me.
Review by Tez Miller
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City of Saints and Madmen Fiction Review
By Flames | April 2, 2008
This is a collection of short stories by Jeff Vandermeer both tangentially and directly about a fictional fantasy city called Ambergris, noted for its somewhat piratical past, the presence of mysterious and sinister mushroom men and freshwater squid. It is also very, very, very weird and very, very, very surreal. I suppose, broadly, it fits into the general thrust of the urban fantasy movement but it is also a damn sight weirder, more Burroughs than Mieville. One story might be a more conventional fantasy story, another might play with the relationship between fantasy and reality and the other might leave you scratching your head and reaching for the dictionary just so you could read something fully comprehensible for a change.
Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough
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Many Bloody Returns Fiction Review
By Flames | April 1, 2008
The problem I have with anthologies is that the quality of the stories varies greatly, as far as I’ve read. Thus, I am not a big fan. Indeed, the authors in this collection are varied: some of them you know well from various paranormal novels, while others are dipping into the supernatural for the first time (they’re primarily mystery writers, on the cosy side, I think). Instead of judging the collection as a whole, let’s look at the stories individually:
Review by Tez Miller
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