Review: Reese by Lori Handeland
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Book Reviews, Reading
Reese by Lori Handeland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
And now for something COMPLETELY different. Yes, this book is out of character for me, but I like Lori Handeland, and since I received a free copy I felt obligated to read it and write a review. I’m keeping the fact that it is a western romance in mind, and judging it accordingly.
I don’t know from western tropes, but I do know the standard romance tropes, and Handeland hits them all. Mary is a spinster schoolmarm who is considered too plain and too outspoken to ever be attractive to any man — in fact, another character (a real jerk) says so. It’s her character, more than her looks, that is the problem, according to the jerk.
But the hero, Reese, finds her beautiful in her innocence, her ignorance of her effect on him, and especially in the fact that she’s as stubborn as he is. The fact that they have to butt heads is an important romance trope, as I understand these things.
Mary believes she isn’t the kind of woman any man would want, and Reese believes he isn’t good enough for Mary, so they hold back from revealing their feelings to each other, providing the main conflict in their relationship.
There’s a plot that goes beyond Mary and Reese, obviously, explaining why the town of Rock Creek needed to hire Reese and his little troop of gunmen in the first place. That larger plot sets up the entire Rock Creek Gang series. I found nothing to laud or complain about in the main plot. It’s probably a standard acceptable western, to be honest, and it doesn’t read so differently than any other sort of adventure story. It worked to set things up, but obviously wasn’t the main focus of the book. The energy is in the romance.
I think perhaps romance fans read books like this because they’re comfortably predictable, like an old friend wearing new clothes. In any case, Handeland has written a sweet little love story that I didn’t mind reading. I could see her hand in the details, and while I would have preferred reading more of one of her paranormal series, she did a nice job with this book. Fans of western romances will probably enjoy it.
Tags: Lori Handeland, Rock Creek Six, romance, western
Review: Prom Nights From Hell
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Reading
So, um, I tried to read this. I really did. I don’t know if it’s “paranormal romance overload” or the fact that I’d just finished reading material from two incredibly good writers (Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear), but I had no patience for the fluff. Overall, I gave the book a 2/10.
i did get through “The Exterminator’s Daughter” Meg Cabot. I don’t intend to read anything else by her. Yes, it was better than oral surgery, but I wish I’d spent the time cleaning the sink or something. To her credit, I did have a “laugh out loud” moment early on, when she used the phrase “tramp stamp.” I hadn’t heard that before, and I love it (although “arse antlers” is probably still my favorite).
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Tags: Elizabeth Bear, horror, Kim Harrison, Lauren Myracle, Madison Avery, Meg Cabot, Michelle Jaffe, paranormal, prom, romance, Sarah Monette, Stephenie Meyer, vampires, wishes
Poetry: Michael Blumenthal
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Poetry, Reading, Relationships
For my Sam
A Marriage
You are holding up a ceiling
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.
But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arm up
to the ceiling beside you.
So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowing back
to your fingers and arms.
And when your partner’s arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.
And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.
From Against Romance: Poems by Michael Blumenthal, Penguin Books, 1988
Tags: Love, marriage, Michael Blumenthal, Poetry, romance, Sam
Romance and Roleplaying
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Family, Fun, Geekery, Relationships, RPGs
Sam has talked about this subject in several of his podcasts, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried to address it. I may fail miserably, but I’ll try.
Sam and I had one of our twice-weekly “date nights” tonight. That means that from about 7pm ’til we go to bed, we do nothing but have fun with each other. The girl amuses herself otherwise, or goes out, and we do whatever we like. Usually, that means we spend some time gaming.
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Tags: energy, Fantasy, Gaming, Horatio Hornblower, Love, Parenting, Penny Arcade, romance, RPGs, Sam
More Fun Reading from Carrie Vaughn
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Reading
I really needed another fiction author to follow, right? But I’ve seen this series of books about a werewolf named Kitty, and I finally got a chance to read them. I finished the first, Kitty and the Midnight Hour, today and jumped right into Kitty Goes to Washington. I have Kitty Takes a Holiday all lined up and ready to go, but I’m already wishing that I had the next volume, Kitty and the Silver Bullet. And that, my dears, is a sign of a fine author spinning a very good yarn, considering all the other books waiting and ready on my shelf.
The library has the books labeled as horror, but I’d put them in the paranormal romance/dark fantasy category. Happily, the “romance” part isn’t the most significant one, and doesn’t get in the way of good plot. There was a moment today when I wondered if “>Vaughn and Kim Harrison had shared a brain to a small extent, but they’ve dealt with a superficially similar issue in very different ways.
If it weren’t for the fact that I just finally got done with my school assignments for the week, and must get up when Sam does in the morning, I’d probably be sitting up reading!
Now I really need to find a source for these short stories, though. Any of you have the relevant magazine issues?
- “Kitty Loses Her Faith” Weird Tales, #333, Fall 2003
- “Kitty and the Mosh Pit of the Damned” Weird Tales #338, Jan-Feb 2006
- “Looking After Family” Realms of Fantasy, February 2007
- “Kitty’s Zombie New Year” Weird Tales #345
Tags: Books, Carrie Vaughn, dark fantasy, Kim Harrison, Kitty Loses Her, Kitty Norville, New Year's Day, romance, Washington, werewolves
Review: A Lick of Frost, Laurell K. Hamilton
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Reading, Sex
I honestly didn’t think Laurell K. Hamilton had it in her, but A Lick of Frost moved me to tears in spots. She managed real romance. I don’t even like reading romances, and I really hate crying, but I couldn’t help it. I even found a quote to keep.
I don’t want to give out any spoilers, especially since it’s quite new, but this novel could reasonably be seen as the end to the Merry Gentry series. I believe Hamilton will write at least one more book, to tie up some details and bring the series to seven volumes. All of the volumes have been fairly slender, and Hamilton is a guaranteed cash cow, so who knows how many books there will actually be? I could, however, stop reading now.
This series is not one to start if, like me, you don’t like waiting for another book in order to know “what happens next.” Generally, I try to wait until a series is finished before I begin to read it, in case it isn’t ever finished. I detest cliffhangers, most especially, and Hamilton has indulged in several.
Unlike most, the Merry Gentry series is good enough that I keep reading despite my personal preference. I’ve never lost track of any important details between books, which is also striking. I’d actually like to have copies of this series to keep, as I might re-read them. In contrast, I stopped buying the Anita Blake books years ago, although I would consider picking up used paperbacks to accompany those I already own just because Katie has expressed interest in them.
Sam is totally disinterested in just about anything having to do with vampires, werewolves, or anything else that is too similar to World of Darkness. I think it’s a reaction to having been so immersed in research and development when he worked for White Wolf, but I’ll leave him to explain it if we wishes. He does tend to scoff at anything too far off the “canon,” as it were.
Since he was involved in Changeling (his favorite), I would have thought the same applied to urban fantasy concerning faery. That’s true, usually, but he’s been drawn into the Merry Gentry books once or twice, and that’s saying something (if only for the quality of some sex scenes).
I know that one reason the Blake series has gotten so tiresome is that sex has taken them over, but Hamilton’s attempts to make the sex part of the plot fall flat. An even bigger one is Anita’s angst over the species and numbers of her loves and sex partners. While she occasionally mentions her religious upbringing as justification, as an animator (one who raises zombies) she left the safety of the Catholic church behind years ago. One could argue that its theology left reality behind, but in any case, her life is permeated by and depends on magic that is bound up in religion, but her overt religious beliefs no longer match her reality or how she’s truly living.
I don’t even like to include the books in that short list of those that truly deal with polyamory, due to the fact that Anita has been so guilt-ridden and unhappy (until the last book or two), while continuing to follow her crotch (okay, the magic, if you believe Hamilton, but seriously…).
Meredith Gentry never has that problem. It is unfortunate that Hamilton has to reach into an imaginary culture to depict people who are comfortable with their sexuality, including multiple sexual partners, but at least she has done so. There is still an annoying “I must pick only one!” theme, but it is made clear that Merry is being forced into such a choice by relatively recent Sidhe custom—not her heart or her conscience. She repeatedly stresses, in her interactions with humans, that she has absolutely no shame about her lifestyle, and that the Sidhe have very different ideas about such things than humans do.
I especially appreciate the repeated theme of accepting diversity and appreciating beauty in everyone. “Everyone” never goes to far as to including, for instance, fat people, but there don’t seem to be any of those in fairy. Her lovers are all terribly beautiful, even the half-Goblin and half-Sluagh, but she expressly does not reject those who are scarred or “different” because of their heritage or experiences. There is overmuch attention to description of appearances for my tastes, especially details of every character’s clothing, but that seems to be all too common in anything with any focus on relationships these days (or I’m just noticing it more—was it always there?)
While there’s still a lot of sex, the reasons for the abundance of sex and variety of partners has been integrated into the Gentry plot from square one. Despite that, it doesn’t feel like the sex scenes take over the books. Anyone with the least bit of prudery should still stay away from the series completely, of course, but that’s made clear on the covers and in the excerpts on the book flaps. Nobody who has ever picked up a Laurell K. Hamilton book in the last five years, at least, has any excuse for claiming naÃveté if he finds the content too racy!
Tags: A Lick of Frost, Books, Catholic Church, dark fantasy, elves, Laurell K. Hamilton, Meredith Gentry, review, romance, Sex