Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
Hello, I'm not dead. I did kind of forget that I had a book blog, though! But I have been reading. Here's a brief review of the novel I finished today.
This mystery in which the perpetrator of the murder is also guilty of a number of sexual assaults has characters who express some very problematic ideas about sexual assault in general. Even a generally skillful writer, as I believe Charlaine Harris is, must tread carefully around these issues, and this stand-alone mystery left something of a bad taste in my mouth.
Perhaps I was a bit biased because I'm a Northerner and the Southern-born-and-raised character refers to her New Yorker neighbors as sounding like a bunch of squawking bluejays. (We have bluejays in the North, Charlaine - I know exactly what that sounds like.)
I haven't read any of the other books in Jane Jamison's Werewolves of Forever, Texas series, but I thought I'd give this one a try. I found it for a deeply discounted price at an outlet store and I couldn't resist snapping it up. I wasn't at all disappointed. It wasn't necessary to read the first 8 books in this series to understand who Milly was as a character.
Milly is the waitress at the diner in the tiny, supernatural town of Forever, which reminded me of Charlaine Harris's Midnight, Texas. Milly can't read minds like Sookie Stackhouse, but she can shapeshift at will into a werewolf. She doesn't even have to wait for the full moon.
One thing is missing from Milly's life, though: unlike most of the werewolves in Forever, she is unmated. Like Jacob Black in Twilight, she expects to "imprint" on someone - maybe two or more someones. It appears that polyandry is not unknown among these particular wolves. In this regard, they're not unlike the wolfish Chanku in Kate Douglas's Wolf Tales series.
I'm a big fan of paranormal romances, so I enjoyed that this mythological territory was somewhat familiar from some of my other favorite series.
Like clockwork, Milly's perfect matches seem to come along in the forms of California transplants Dan and Matthew Hudson. But Dan and Matthew bring a bit of baggage - their 15-year-old niece Riley, whose parents were killed in a car accident. Her uncles are her surrogate parents.
Riley does NOT warm up to Milly quickly. Cue the dramatic suspense: Riley's unwise flirtation with some immature teenage vampires leads the vamps to kidnap and attempt to sacrifice her for a ritual. Bravely, Milly offers herself in exchange for Riley. She's rescued by the brothers before the vampires kill her, and Milly-Riley relationship is permanently turned around.
So Milly gets her perfect mates and her happy ending. Who could ask for anything more?
This review will not be spoiler-free for characters, although I will not discuss the resolution of the novel's central mystery. Read at your own risk!
Goddesses help me, I am addicted to this series.
I liked this one a little better than Midnight Crossroad, the first book of the trilogy. Two characters from the Sookie Stackhouse series make appearances. This is our first summer without a new season of True Blood to look forward to, and I'll admit I kind of miss Sookie, Bill, and the rest. For me, this made Day Shift even more fun than the first one.
So, which two characters show up? For a clue, you can turn to my review of After Dead, the summing-up volume that caps off the Sookie Stackhouse series. I wrote of that rather unsatisfying, slim hardcover, "On the bright side, the entries for Barry the Bellboy and Quinn seem to imply that these characters will get some kind of spin-off or sequel."
Oh yes, there be weretigers. Not only Quinn, but his son as well - and the Rev, the quirky Midnight resident whose religious services extend to the burial of deceased pets.
No only do we discover the supernatural nature of the Rev, but of husbands Joe and Chuy as well. They're angels, although the implication seems to be that they're of the fallen ilk who sired children with beautiful human women, as captured in the Biblical book of Genesis.
Given that Joe and Chuy apparently had female partners at one point in history, is it really fair to call them a gay couple? Not that guys who identify as gay don't ever have male-female relationships in their past, but I would hate to think of this as another example of bi erasure. Perhaps they're pansexual or queer; perhaps human sexuality labels don't really apply to cherubim.
In my review of Midnight Crossroad, I wrote, "Maybe in future books she [Harris] can expand on Madonna's character and give us some other sides of her personality." Harris does, giving Madonna an opportunity to show her strength and save the day. I really enjoyed this scene, and it shows Harris continues to grow as a writer - maybe even as a person.
As I said in my previous review, "Charlaine Harris isn't unproblematic...Still, I miss Sookie Stackhouse, and I'm willing to accept Fiji Cavanaugh, Olivia Charity, Bobo Winthrop et al. as a substitute."
Maybe the most disappointing thing about this one was that Lemeul, Midnight's sole resident vampire, hardly appears in this volume at all. He's still on the quest he began in the first book, to find someone even older than himself who can read the mysterious language in the long-lost books of magic he recently rediscovered. It doesn't appear that he's found such a person (or creature) yet, so that plotline is likely to pay off (let's hope rewardingly) in the next book.
I continue to stand by that statement. I anxiously look forward to the trilogy's concluding volume.
This is a book I checked out from my local public library. I was not obligated to review it in any way.
My last audio book for my commute to and from my corporate day job was Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris. This is the first book in the Harper Connelly series. Harper is the book's heroine. After being hit by a lightning strike as a child, Harper developed the ability to locate dead bodies. She feels a kind of sixth sense, a buzzing sensation, when she's near a corpse, and she gets a vision of how the deceased came to be deceased.
I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong about the identities of the murderers. My first inkling was that Harper's love interest, Deputy Hollis Boxleitner, would turn out to be the killer. But no, he's just a pleasant and slightly lonely blond-haired man in his 20s who, very tragically, lost his wife.
I was a bit disappointed when Harper didn't show any inclination to stay with Hollis, or at least see him again. But she's a young woman, only 24, and she and her brother/manager Tolliver live a nomadic lifestyle. I don't judge her for having a brief romance; I'm simply more used to romance novels, where the relationships are decidedly longer-term. I didn't enjoy this as much as the first Sookie Stackhouse book because it wasn't as romantic, but that's just a personal preference.
I'm not usually much of a mystery reader. I wouldn't have listened to The Cuckoo's Calling if it hadn't been written by J.K. Rowling. Also, audio book choices are somewhat more limited than paper and e-book choices. A lot of the bestsellers that make it into book-on-CD format aren't the ones that interest me. But I do love paranormal themes, which is what makes Charlaine Harris an author of choice to me.
This was a perfectly satisfactory story with an interesting heroine with an unusual ability. I don't know yet whether or not I'll finish this series, but I certainly enjoyed listening to this audio book.
I did have a bit of a hard time picturing Harper and Tolliver, though. He's supposed to be tall and pale, with straight black hair and a mustache. I keep thinking of the Guy Fawkes mask from V For Vendetta. Harper has short, curly black hair, but when I try to picture a Caucasian women with curly black hair I keep thinking of Mother Gothel from the Disney movie Tangled. It may be that I imagine more vividly when I'm physically reading that when I'm having the book narrated to me.
I checked this book out from my local public library and was not obligated to review it in any way. Next up, I'll be listening to A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle, read by Jennifer Ehle. I actually had no idea Ehle was American, because I remember her mainly as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, opposite Colin Firth. Her mother is English, which I suppose is why she can do a passable English accent. In any event, she makes a lovely audio book narrator of the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time.
I'll still be aggressively imagining Alexis-Bledel-as-Rory-Gilmore in the role of Meg Murry in my mind's eye.
In last week's post, we discussed the 7th and final season of True Blood in terms of the fates of some of my favorite characters: Tara, Sam, Alcide, Jessica, and Arlene. Today we'll wrap up with Sookie, Bill, Jason, Eric, Pam, and Lafayette.
I'm going to mention Charlaine Harris's book series, so if you don't want to be spoiled on the books, do not proceed.
Lafayette Reynolds and James Kent: Tara Thornton met a terrible fate, but fortunately her cousin Lafayette did not. Several seasons back - in Season 5 - Lafayette lost the man who had the potential to be the love of his life, Jesus Velasquez.
(I'd forgotten how beautiful Kevin Alejandro was until Tit Elingtin and I watched the series Weeds. Then I remembered the Jesus-Lafayette romance. Then I made myself sad.)
It was high time for Lafayette to find love again.
Creative Commons image by Kristin Dos Santos
When we met James Kent in the vampire internment camp is Season 6, he was introduced as a love interest for Jessica Hamby. He was also played by a blond actor names Luke Grimes. When Grimes read the script for Season 7, he decided to leave the show. In a plot twist, James turns out to be bisexual. The '70s rocker vampire had a previous relationship with a male bandmate, and he's attracted to Lafayette.
This season, James is played by dark-haired actor Nathan Parsons.
Creative Commons image by Nehrams2020
I have a wee bit of a problem with the way their relationship was handled, though. James, rather than breaking up with Jessica and then pursuing Lafayette, he sneaks off with Lafayette at Sookie's party. Of course, Jessica just happens to step outside at the right time catch James and Lafayette having sex.
A) I don't like the stereotype that bisexual and pansexual people are all cheaters. We're probably no more or less faithful than the gays, the lesbians, and the straights.
I don't judge people for non-monogamy, but I do judge people for betrayal of a partner's trust.
B) I wish James and Lafayette's sex scene had been better than just an outdoor quickie leaning against a car. It seems like every other couple on the series has, at one point, gotten romantic music, candles, firelight, and a bearskin rug...or at least a nice, sturdy pool table. James and Lafayette don't deserve a romantic sex scene? Even Eric-Talbot was more romantic...up until the point that Eric staked Talbot.
However, the bad blood between Jessica and James did not seem to last long at all. I think she was just happy that he was happy with Lafayette. The finale's flash-forward showed them still together.
I must say, Lafayette and James made one strikingly beautiful couple. But, as we saw with Pam/Tara, this show had a history of giving short shrift to couples when one of them is a person of color.
On the next TV show Nelsan Ellis lands on, can he please play the main character?
Jason Stackhouse: Jason's story ends happily, and pretty much the same way it did in AfterDead. I'm glad, because you have to like Jason, even if he is dumber than a bag of hammers. The biggest difference between book Jason and TV Jason, of course, is that book Jason turned into a werepanther.
In the True Blood finale, it appears that Jason has married Bridget, Hoyt's fiancee from Alaska until they broke up over the issue of children. They have three children together. Jason appears to be an excellent father. Happily ever after for them.
I don't really have any emotional attachment to Bridget. She was introduced this season, essentially as a plot device to resolve the tension between Jessica, Hoyt, and Jason. But it's still good to see Jason settled down.
Creative Commons image by Kristin Dos Santos
Ryan Kwanten, I will miss your butt. I hope to see it again in your next project.
Pam Swynford de Beaufort and Eric Northman: By rescuing Sarah Newlin from the Yakuza, only to use her for their own purposes, and then killing the Yakuza, Pam and Eric have become rich beyond their wildest dreams, cured Hepatitis V, and no longer have to answer to anyone. They get to stay together, and there's no indication they'll have to meet the true death any time soon.
This is a much sunnier ending than After Dead mapped out for Eric, married to a vampire he didn't love. I don't even remember what happened to Pam, other than that she took over for Eric as the sheriff of Area 5.
What I didn't like about Pam and Eric's ending was their cruelty to Sarah Newlin. They keep her chained in the basement of Fangtasia, and vampires pay them thousands of dollars to spend a few seconds terrorizing her. Yes, Sarah did an awful thing to vampire-kind when she helped the governor unleash Hep V on them, but that still doesn't make it okay for Pam and Eric to torture her. Pam and Eric are cruel. Eric's cruel nature is why I never really rooted for Eric and Sookie to be together.
I also wish that Alexander Skarsgard's unnamed "boyfriend" character in Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" video had been nicer to the character Gaga is playing. Instead, he pushed her off a balcony.
Still, I am also going to miss A.Skars's butt. I'm sure we'll see it again, though. He does all those strange foreign movies.
Drum roll, please.
Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton: In Dead Ever After, Sookie embarks on a relationship with Sam Merlotte. The official end of the book series doesn't tell us whether or not they'll have a long, happy life together. After Dead reveals they do, with three children, although one of their children dies as a teen.
I had always hoped Sookie and Bill getting back together would be the endgame of the book series. I did not get my wish. I had a faint hope that it would be the endgame of the TV series...but that started getting dismantled as soon as the ailing Bill started pushing Sookie away.
I really didn't think she would kill him, though. I really thought they would change their minds at the last minute.
Sookie driving a stake into Bill's heart was sad enough after all the time I've spent reading about and watching these characters. It was made even more poignant by the fact that Anna Paquin and Bill Moyer fell in love in real life, got married, and had a child together. This must have been an agonizing scene for them to film - who wants to contemplate the mortality of their spouse? The scene of Sookie covered in the goo that used to be Bill was heartbreaking.
Creative Commons image by BladeRunner0427
The flash-forward to three years from that moment, showing Sookie married to an anonymous human man and pregnant, held no emotional pull for me. Was he the love of her life? Maybe, but since we the viewers had no clue who he was, he didn't mean anything to us.
I just really wish Bill would have been happy knowing his daughter's descendants, Andy and Adilyn, were alive, well, and possibly carrying on the family line, and that Jessica was happily married and might have a vampire progeny of her own some day. (Possibly, Hoyt will one day want Jessica to turn him.) I wish that had been enough of a reason for him to stay alive - or, well, undead, at least until Sookie's death. Considering what a magnet for supernatural trouble she is, Sookie probably won't live that long, anyway.
So, the thing that disappointed me most about the finale was Bill's death, followed by Sookie's lackluster, non-supernatural HEA.
What did you think about the last season of True Blood?
Yesterday I finished reading a short Nook book, Fated by Alexandra Anthony. Fated is the first book in Anthony's Vampire Destiny series of paranormal erotic romance novels. This was the review I posted on Goodreads after I finished the book:
This erotic paranormal romance is a quick, easy, fun read with lots of hot sex. I thought the mind-reading heroine, Josephine, reminded me of Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries series heroine Sookie Stackhouse. The main difference is that while Sookie is blonde, Josie has reddish blonde hair.
Josie is a Southerner, but the setting of this story is Bali, where Josie is on a sort of working vacation. The hero, Stefan, is tall, blond, and Nordic. He has icy blue eyes and speaks Swedish, which automatically made me think of Alexander Skarsgaard as Eric Northman on True Blood...which is, of course, the TV adaptation of Harris's novel series. Did this read a little like True Blood fan fiction? Yes, and I didn't mind. There isn't much of a plot until the very end of the novel - the action mostly happens in bed - but I didn't mind that either, because the characters were likable and the sex scenes were well-written. It was a nice escape into a vampire fantasy world.
I bought this ebook from the Barnes and Noble website. I'd discovered it on the http://bookclubreading.com/ website. The website not only lists books for sale and accepts reviews but also allows book clubs to contact the authors for book club meetings. FYI, I'm an affiliate and earn a small commission when a group books an author through my site.
Because I bought the book at Barnes and Noble, I also wanted to post a copy of my review to the B+N website. It was then that I discovered the ebook was no longer available on that site. I thought this was a little strange, but not too strange. When I read Play Him Again, I went to review it on Smashwords only to discover it's no longer for sale there.
So then I thought maybe I'd post my review on Amazon.com. (FYI, I am an Amazon affiliate, but there isn't an affiliate link in this post.) Here's where I discovered the controversy with this book. I didn't read any of the other reviews on Goodreads.
Fated has 275 reviews on Amazon, with an average of 3.5 stars. It has 120 5-star reviews and 45 1-star reviews. The 1-star reviews, for the most part, all convey the same information: namely, that Anthony plagiarized parts of Fated from a True Blood fan fiction author who went by the name of ficlet78. But how am I to determine whether these accusations are true or false?
By Googling "Alexandra Anthony plagiarism," I came upon ficlet78's WordPress blog. In a post dated July 28, 2014, ficlet78 (who signs the post as "Heather") says she Googled a few sentences of her fan fiction work titled "Pretty Kitty" and found her words being used in an excerpt on Anthony's WordPress blog (which is private, i.e. not accessible without an invitation). She then discovered Anthony's work for sale on B+N and Amazon. Heather says she's contacted Anthony and asked her to take the work down. It appears this is the reason I could no longer find the book for sale at B+N.
If you read through the comments, you'll see that in a comment posted July 31, 2014, Heather says Anthony admitted copying Heather's work. Heather writes, "As angry as I was/am, I have to take the moment and give her some credit. She could have ignored my messages. She could have taken the psycho-bitch route and denied the whole thing, then done everything in her power to discredit me. But she didn’t. She admitted it. Publicly. And while she did take one scene from my work (which is all I and several others have found so far), she did the hardest thing and was a fucking adult about it. So I thank her for that, at the very least."
The blog Book Goggles posted about the incident on July 30, 2014. Read here
However, since I'm unable to read Alexandra Anthony's response firsthand, I'm aware that this is only one side of the story. I'd hate for a hardworking author to be unjustly accused of plagiarism. At the same time, because we authors do work so hard, often for little or no compensation, it's especially egregious when someone does cross the line and pass someone else's work off at their own.
When I was a student in a Catholic high school, I was told I would automatically fail my English classes if I were caught plagiarizing in a paper, even if it was unintentional (i.e. failure to cite a source). I guess that lesson always stuck with me. It never crosses my mind to use any words other than my own, except when I let the reader know that something is a quote.
In summary, I enjoyed Fated, but I have reason to suspect it's not entirely the original work of Alexandra Anthony. I leave it for the reader to decide for herself.
I'm having one of those "read 1,000 things at the same time" moments again, but what's new? I love books. I'm kind of obsessed with them, really.
My main book is Four: A Divergent Short Story Collection, which I picked up at the public library a few days ago. I loved the Divergent trilogy. Even though I already bought and read one of the e-book versions of "The Transfer," the first story in the collection, I haven't read all four stories yet.
I had intended to take a short hiatus from reading young adult books, but the opportunity to get this from the library weakened my resolve.
By the way, I said in my Divergent review that Tris and Caleb Prior are fraternal twins. Four makes it clear they're "Irish twins." In other words, they were born ten or eleven months apart. I missed that upon first reading.
I had been reading the final book in the All Souls Trilogy series, The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to finish more than a third of it before it had to go back to the library.
It's too wonderful. I don't want to gulp it down. I need to savor. I think I'll have to buy the e-book and read it in my Nook.
The book I'm currently reading in my Nook is Fated (Vampire Destiny #1) by Alexandra Anthony. It's a paranormal romance, and a pretty quick, easy read.
The vampire, Stefan Lifsten, is tall, blond, and Nordic, heavily reminiscent of Eric Northman in Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries series. The heroine, Josephine, is a telepath who reads people's minds. She's very much like Harris's Sookie Stackhouse. It almost reads like True Blood fan fiction - and I'm not complaining. I'm liking it.
The last episode of True Blood is coming up this Sunday. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm dreading it at the same time.
The book I'm reading in my kitchen as I wait for coffee to brew and water to boil is Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott.
It's a paranormal murder mystery. Half the chapters are written from the point of view of a vampire/horror film actress who's sort of the sheriff of Hollywood the same way Eric is the sheriff of the Shreveport region. All of the victims (at least the first three) were her vampiric creations, her "children." The other half of the chapters are written from the POV of the mortal human detective who's investigating the crime. He doesn't know that vampires really exist.
I haven't read any of Michael Scott's other books, but he wrote the YA fantasy Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series. And of course we all remember who Nicholas Flamel is...he created the Philosopher's Stone, the very thing that gave young Harry Potter so much trouble. Well, that's the folklore. He was an actual historical person, too.
Barbeau in a Creative Commons image by Leslie Gottlieb.
Adrienne Barbeau, of course, is an actress as well as an author. Very beautiful lady.
The book I keep in my husband's van in case of reading time is HellFire by Kate Douglas. This is part of my PNR rotation. It's the second book in the DemonSlayers series. It's a silly-but-fun paranormal romance series with a hero from the lost continent of Lemuria. (That's an interesting subject we'll save for when I finish the book. I have a thing for discarded scientific theories.)
Okay, the cover model with the long blond hair looks exactly like Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies. As I'm reading the book, though, I'm imagining the tall, white-blond hero as Lee Pace in the Hobbit movies. I'm imagining Rutina Wesley - True Blood's Tara Thornton - in the role of the heroine, Ginny. (That's Ginny as in Virginia, not like Harry Potter's Ginny. Mrs. Potter's nickname comes from Ginevra, the Italian equivalent of Jennifer or Guinevere.)
I love me some Kate Douglas. She had me hooked from the first time I picked up Wolf Tales.
Now, the serious book I'm reading is my latest Amazon Vine pick. It's called Religio Duplex: How the Enlightenment Reinvented Egyptian Religion by Jan Assmann, translated from German by Robert Savage. (I don't know what Assmann means in the German language, but it's unfortunately giggle-worthy in English. I can't help but think of the Seinfeld episode in which Kramer mistakenly receives the "ASS MAN" vanity license plates.) This scholarly work describes the history of a thought, from a Greek interpretation of the Egyptian religion during antiquity to the re-emergence of this interpretation during the European Enlightenment era of the 1600s and 1700s. Assmann is an Egyptologist, and he's also a scholar of European history, so this is right up his alley. I'll write a detailed review as soon as I finish this dense academic work. I'm about halfway through.
The positives: An interesting cast of characters, including exactly one vampire (with brief appearance by a few other supernatural creatures), a psychic, a witch, and a talking cat.
This new series seems to be set in the same world as Harris's other books, with references to Lily Bard and Harper Connelly (I haven't read those series, only the Southern Vampire Mysteries). Interesting female characters, including Fiji, the witch, who is a curvy/average-sized woman (I like that every single heroine doesn't have to be skinny), and Olivia, who seems to be some kind of trained warrior/assassin.
This small, exceedingly quirky Texas town is not without its charms, and there are enough plot twists and turns to keep the reader interested. I engaged with these characters, and I'll look forward to the next book in the series.
The not-so-positives: There is exactly one Black woman in Midnight, Texas, and she is in a perpetually bad mood. To be fair, if I were the only Black woman in town, I would probably be a bit bummed out myself. However, Harris not writing the story's one woman of color, Madonna, as a likable person is part of a larger pattern in Harris's writing. Maybe in future books she can expand on Madonna's character and give us some other sides of her personality.
Another thing is that the victim in this murder mystery is not well-liked around Midnight, specifically for the reason that she was famous for flirting with every man in town. Shaming women for their sexuality is another negative pattern in Harris's novels, once again rearing its ugly head. There's even a whiff of blaming the victim for her own murder.
Charlaine Harris isn't unproblematic, and I'm not defending the flaws in her characterization. Still, I miss Sookie Stackhouse, and I'm willing to accept Fiji Cavanaugh, Olivia Charity (I keep imagining her being portrayed by Olivia Wilde), Bobo Winthrop et al. as a substitute.
Dying to Tell Me by Australian author Sherryl Clark is a paranormal mystery with a young adult protagonist. Before I read it, my grandma read it. She doesn't usually read YA or paranormal, so I'm not sure where she picked it up. A friend must have passed it along to her. Her copy is inscribed, "To Emily York, Enjoy your book! Love in Jesus! Bro. Ed + Sis. Betty Borlik 9/5/11." I don't know the Borliks or Emily York, but maybe the Yorks are some of my grandma's neighbors. Alternatively, she may have bought this at the thrift shop.
It was a fairly quick read - I read a large chunk of it while waiting at my husband's doctor's office. I'd never heard of Clark before, but judging from the back matter, she's a popular children's picture book and young adult author Down Under.
The heroine is Sasha Miller, age 13. Her mother recently left the family, so Sasha's dad Dennis is moving Sasha and her 10-year-old brother Nicky to the small town of Manna Creek. There, Dennis will be the new chief constable.
Sasha isn't getting along very well in Manna Creek, though. Her first day, she slips near the creek and hits her head on a stone, landing her in the hospital with a concussion. Then she discovers a dilapidated old building in the back yard of the house they're staying in, and it turns out to be the town's first jail which, incidentally, is haunted by the ghost of a man who committed suicide a hundred years before. Or did he?
That would be bad enough, but when some of Dennis's mates bring around King, a trained police dog, to be the newest member of the Miller family, Sasha thinks she's hearing things. In fact, she thinks she can hear King's thoughts telepathically, and he can hear hers. Is Sasha going crazy, or simply coming into her special powers?
This book reminded me, to varying degrees, of three other things I really like:
Still, these elements added up to a unique story. I liked this book, and my grandma liked it, too. Clark's storytelling makes this a compelling read even if you're not normally a mystery reader, not normally a paranormal reader, and/or not normally a YA reader.
My grandma is currently reading, and enjoying, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, a Canadian author. I haven't read the book, but I did like the movie. I'm still working my way through Middlemarch - I'm almost at the middle - and my secondary book is The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling.
I checked this book out from my local library, unwilling to pay for a book that's mostly blank space and pictures until after I'd given the text a chance. I've been a very loyal reader of the Sookie Stackhouse series, starting around 2005 or so when my mom loaned me the first book. I read this in about an hour, sitting in a restaurant waiting for dinner while my husband watched college football.
Although I've read all 13 books, I have to admit I don't remember a lot of the minor characters, so a lot of the entries in this reference book didn't mean anything to me. That will be frustrating to anyone who's a more casual reader and not an obsessed fan.
It is good to know a bit more about the fates of the main characters: Sookie, Sam, Eric, Bill, Jason, Pam, and Alcide. The information isn't very detailed, but at least it gives you a general idea of who lived happily ever after.
Hint: Sookie and Sam do.
Some of the entries show signs of what I'll generously call unpolished writing, and that too is frustrating. Harris has an unpleasant habit of telling us about a misfortune that occurred to a character and then making us infer from context that the result was death. Was it really so hard to say that so-and-so died? Clearly she has no qualms about giving her characters horrid endings, yet she can't seem to bring herself to come out and say so blatantly.
Hardcore fans may enjoy the information found in these pages (200 pages, with about 30 pages of actual text), but the average reader isn't going to enjoy this book.
On the bright side, the entries for Barry the Bellboy and Quinn seem to imply that these characters will get some kind of spin-off or sequel. The Quinn illustration was actually my favorite page in the whole book.
I may not exactly be Dauntless material, but I did stumble upon a chance to let out my inner Tris Prior yesterday. My husband Tit Elingtin (who's doing much better since his surgery, thank you) and I went on a walk through the park near our home after work. As we got near the bridge between two parks, we saw some kind of activity going on; soon we figured out that the city department of parks and recreation was offering zip lining across the river.
Not exactly the Hancock Building, but I don't think I'm brave enough for that anyway.
This is a Creative Commons example of what zip lining looks like.
Everyone looked like they were safe and having fun, and it only cost $10 per person, so I called my mom and asked her if she wanted to do it. I'd remembered that she mentioned wanting to try zip lining in a previous conversation. She agreed to come over to the park, and after Tit and I had supper at a park-adjacent restaurant (I had two tacos, while he had a "Big Ass BLT" made with an entire pound of bacon - the menu board literally said "Not Responsible For Any Heart Attacks"), we met her by the bridge and she and I bought our tickets. Tit, who said he did not want to go, held our stuff and served as videographer.
(The video is still in my mom's camera for the time being - I'm going to try to add music and upload it to my YouTube account.)
When I got up near the front of the line, I thought I heard the woman who was getting ready to jump say, "I'm a virgin." The parks guy who was checking the harnesses said, "What's that?" Then I realized the woman had said, "It's like Divergent," as she told the parks guy a little bit about the book.
Jumping off the scaffold on the high river bank, zipping over the water and touching down on the low river bank was incredibly fun and not scary. It was well worth my $10. I went first, and then my mom went right after me. She was not scared either, and if she says it's not scary then anyone can do it.
First, a gratuitous picture of myself, a cat-herding moon maiden.
I'm currently one episode behind on True Blood. When last I saw, Lafayette was possessed by the spirit of Sookie Stackhouse's dead father, who was attempting to drown Sookie in a river as he had tried unsuccessfully to do when Sookie was a little mind-reading girl. I assume someone will save her - not Eric, because he's locked up in vampire camp being forced to fight Pam - but maybe Bill or a friendly ghost like Jesus.
If you don't watch True Blood, and/or haven't read Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries series, perhaps it will suffice to say it's a supernatural soap opera.
Typing up her mem-meows.
In all seriousness, I wish to congratulate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the birth of His Royal Highness, Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge. May he have a long, happy, healthy life.
Thank you, Charlaine Harris, for the years of enjoyment your Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries has given me. I absolutely adore this series, a wild 13-part paranormal ride. Dead Until Dark was one of the books that first drew me into the paranormal romance genre, even though it isn't strictly speaking a romance series.
I got this book at the library.
I've always wanted it to be that, though. I wanted a continuous romantic arc from the first book through the last, with Bill and Sookie rediscovering and rekindling their love for one another. I imagined that ending the series without Bill and Sookie being together would be like ending the Twilight Saga with Bella running off with Mike.
(I've never liked book-Eric.)
However, Harris had a different story arc in mind, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I truly enjoyed reading how it played out. At the moment when Sam and Sookie discovered their mutual attraction, I was rooting for them. I was satisfied with the ending, despite any preconceived notions I had before I started reading.
It was a pleasure to read about consummate ladies' man Jason Stackhouse finally settling down and getting married. It was deeply satisfying that some long-term villains finally got their comeuppance. The book doesn't break any new thematic ground for this series, and in this case that was a comfort, since Harris was wrapping the series up. As usual, there's a murder, and Sookie's life is in almost-constant danger. As usual, she gets horribly injured.
As usual, she does the thing that makes her annoying as a narrator: gets jealous of and/or slut-shames any other female character who crosses her radar. To my everlasting shame, I didn't take much notice of this until I read ACrackedMoon's "Meet Charlaine Harris: Racist, Misogynist, Talentless." I don't agree with everything in that post, and I certainly wouldn't call Harris "talentless," but once Sookie's slut-shaming tendencies have been seen, they can't be unseen.
Sookie isn't a perfect character, and she remains a magnet for paranormal troubles of all kinds (and often a damsel in distress), but after 13 books and now knowing her full story, I'm glad I stuck with Sookie. I don't ask for perfection. I ask for a good story, well told. Charlaine Harris delivered.
I'm really going to miss this series. I'd like to know if Sookie and Sam ever get married, or if they decide to just be friends with benefits. I'd like to know if Bill ever finds someone, and if Eric really spends the next 200 years with Freyda. I'm sure Pam has many fascinating adventures as the new sheriff of Area 5 - and we never really got to see Karin in action.
Fortunately, we still have at least one more season of True Blood to look forward to. I won't lie - I'm hoping for a lot of exploration of the budding Pam-Tara romance.
Via my Facebook friend Tim Lieder (the editor of She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror - awesome short story collection you should read if you haven't already. I wrote the editorial review that appears on Amazon), I came across this article last night:
Its writer is ACrackedMoon, and the article's contention is that Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels are filled with racism and misogyny, and that Sookie herself is one of the worst offenders. Characters of color are disposable, women are incompetent man-stealing bitches and men are the answer to all of life's problems.
Charlaine Harris in a Creative Commons image by lbshopgirl
At the risk of my college Women's Studies professor tracking me down and slapping me upside the head with the collected works of Bell Hooks, I've never picked up on this in any significant way, and I've read every Sookie Stackhouse book there is. Granted, I did pick up on Pam making racially insensitive remarks to Tara on recent episodes of True Blood. But I never came to the conclusions that Moon does, calling Sookie "a judgmental fuckwad," "a petty, worthless little shit," and "an ignorant shitstain."
Actually, I think True Blood tried to present a less all-white, more realistic version of the racial makeup of Bon Temps, making Tara an African-American woman, and keeping Lafayette on as a character long after he'd been murdered in the book series.
Caught in the same net of misogyny are urban fantasy authors Jim Butcher and Laurell K. Hamilton. I've never read Butcher, and all I know of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake is from a single short story I read in some anthology or other.
I wouldn't call Charlaine Harris "talentless," but I will be more aware of Sookie's biases when I read the final novel in the series. I did notice that Sookie was getting mentally tougher after all of her horrifying paranormal experiences, but I never thought of her as mean or as a "redneck stereotype." Moon's got a lot of vivid examples, though. Read the article and decide for yourself.
******
Now, about this movie version of From Here to Eternity from 1953; I watched it yesterday. I figured there were certain aspects of the novel that couldn't be portrayed in films in the early '50s, but it was still a bit shocking to see how much was actually left out. No Violet Ugure, for one thing. No Jack Malloy - the film script doesn't even have Prew going to the stockade. No stockade scenes whatsoever.
No Dana Holmes Jr., either. Instead of bearing Dynamite his heir, then having to have a hysterectomy after he gave her an STD, Karen had a hysterectomy after she went into premature labor and had a stillborn son. That was sad. It precludes the scene in which Junior comes home for lunch, and Milt Warden has to hide in the bedroom closet.
I'll always think of Burt Lancaster in terms of Elmer Gantry. What a great movie that is, based on a Sinclair Lewis novel (which I never read). Arrogant con man (like Sawyer on Lost - I'm up to mid-season 3) tries to roll a Salvation Army preacher, falls in love with her, makes her more worldly while he becomes more spiritual, culminating in great tragedy. Watch that if you haven't seen it already. But I digress.
Clearly, Prew and Lorene are the great love story of the movie, despite the famous beach scene between Karen Holmes and Milt Warden. When Karen and Milt say goodbye to one another, it's not a romantic scene at all. It's much better in the book, when she's trying to feel like he loves her without needing her sexually, and the best he can do to prove this to her is to make love to her without them having intercourse. Of course, that couldn't be filmed in 1953, so instead we have a very sterile scene with them on a park bench, a goodbye with no real emotion. When Lorene begs Prewitt not to go back to his company, it's much easier to believe she's actually offering to give up her life to be with him because she truly loves him. Of course, in the movie there's no implication that he slept with her roommate Georgette. Not that this made Prew a bad guy, necessarily, but he did tend to take advantage of an opportunity.
Public domain image
The emotional climax for Milt Warden is listening to Prew play taps. This is also a very heartfelt and dramatic moment in the book, too. It calls for Burt Lancaster to convey a lot of sadness and thwarted admiration, mostly with his eyes, and it's very beautifully filmed. Monty Clift, playing with huge tears rolling down his cheeks, truly looks as if he's just lost his best friend.
In the movie, you see, Prew is mourning the death of Angelo Maggio. Yeah, the movie killed off Maggio! The whole reason I liked that stupid kid (19 years old in the book, by the way - portrayed by 38-year-old Frank Sinatra) is that he was tough enough to take repeated beatings, fake (mostly fake? It's probably a little bit real, too) a mental illness and thus earn his discharge. Then he rides off into the sunset, off to Mexico to become a cowboy. But in the movie - dead.
Also left out of the film is Isaac Nathan Bloom. Maggio's great drunkenness, for which he ends up in the stockade, stems in the book from Maggio and Prew going out on the town without money on the expectation that gay guys will buy them drinks, although clearly they do not expect to have to do anything in return for these drinks. Maggio, Prew and the two "queers" have a long, philosophical conversation about whether or not homosexuality is a choice - but again, this could not be filmed in 1953. So we don't have the scene with Bloom being investigated on suspicion of being a homosexual. Nor do we get the scene in which Maggio attacks Bloom for Bloom's crude sexual remark about Maggio's sister. In the movie, it's the late Ernest Borgnine as James "Fatso" Judson who whistles at a picture of Angelo's sister. Yeah, they bring in Judson a lot earlier than he appears in the book, and have Judson kill Maggio to give Prew a clearer motive for killing Judson.
I miss Bloom, though, despite his unfortunate tendency to play the "you hate me 'cause I'm Jewish" card. He's like the Finnick Odair of From Here to Eternity: at first he just seems like a jerk and you kinda hate him, then you sympathize, and then he dies and you're like, "Oh, gawd, no!"
So, no Bloom, no "rolling the queers," no Violet, no Malloy, no Junior, no long-term consequences from sexually transmitted diseases in the movie. You have to read the novel, or you're only getting a small portion of the story, with some of the humanity sweated out of it for the sake of a 1950s audience. The movie's a snack, but the book is a delicious buffet.
My mom and I both read Deadlocked, the 12th Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris, this week. So that you can better visualize the reviewers of this book, I present this photo, taken three Mother's Days ago at a fancy-schmancy brunch. We're drinking mimosas.
I am the dark-haired one.
This is the impression I recorded on GoodReads. I do not promise a spoiler-free zone.
Sookie Stackhouse, you listen to me: Eric is a jerk. Except when he was under a witch's spell, Eric has always been a jerk. You do not love Eric. In your 13th and final novel, you'd better decide to get back together with Bill, or you will break my heart.
This wasn't the most exciting volume of Sookie's adventures, and the ending was abrupt. The climactic scene almost felt tacked on, as if Charlaine Harris needed a last-minute excuse for Sookie to use the powerful faery-magic object she possessed. But reading a Sookie Stackhouse novel is like visiting a long-established friend. Whatever happens in the next book, I will tear through it in three days like I did this one, and I will sob when it ends, however it ends.
Bill says he'll refuse to make Sookie a vampire, but we'll see.
My mom must have finished it last night. She e-mailed me her impressions, which were as follows:
"OMG! Why, why was Claude so bad! Why did Eric leave Sookie!
Why did Quinn suddenly call?
Why did all the faeries have to leave America?? What about Sookie, won't she need some fairy connection? This book was so good. I can't wait for the answers to all these questions.
I bet Sookie ends up with Sam or no one, just her nephew."
I love that my mom e-mails using the phrase "OMG." (I'm going to die laughing the day I get an OMFG.) I composed an in-kind reply, which went like this:
"Eric is a jerk. Eric's always been a jerk, except when he was cursed.
The Quinn part, I think, was just wrapping up a loose end.
Sookie will be fine without the fairies. Besides, Dermot stayed.
You think she'll end up with Sam? I don't know. I'll be sad if it's not Bill."
"Sad" won't begin to describe it, actually. I'll be bereft. But I was wrong about one point, which Mom corrected me on:
"Dermot didn't stay. At the last minute he went. His father finally acknowledged him."
Of course you're right, Mom.
Season 5 of True Blood, please hurry up and get here. Now, gratuitous werewolf flesh.
Stopping by from Reading-Romances.com's Romancing the Valentine Giveaway Hop? Please find the giveaway post HERE.
February is the month of love and what do we love more than hot, sexy, dangerous and seductive vampires? Vampires For Valentines Giveaway Hop is all about spreading our love for these supernatural creatures.
We all have our favorite vampire couples. For Twilighters, it might be Edward/Bella, Alice/Jasper or Emmett/Rosalie. Fans of Sookie Stackhouse might root for America's favorite part-fairy psychic waitress to end up with Viking vampire Eric Northman or Civil War vampire Bill Compton. Fans of the Black Dagger Brotherhood have their favorite couples; mine happens to be Zsadist and the OTHER Bella, though I'm not opposed to "Qhuay," and I rather like Butch-Marissa as well.
Now let's play what-if. What if Edward and Rosalie were a couple, and Bella Swan fell hopelessly in love with Emmett? What if Edward visited Bon Temps and found himself magnetically attracted to Pam? If Twilight's Victoria hooked up with Eric Northman, would she find him a suitable replacement for James? Or would Victoria make a better match for the leather-and-knives, demon-slaying bros of the BDB - and who would be her ideal mate? What would Damon Salvatore make of True Blood newbie vamp Jessica?
To enter the giveaway, answer this question in a comment on this post: Which vampire couple would you like to see get together? Use your imagination - and any vampire combo from books, movies or whatever medium you like.
The Prize: On Feb. 17th, using Random.org, I will choose one winner to receive paperback copies of the following two books, some of my contributions to vampire literature.
Vamps: A Lesbian Anthology with Teeth, edited by Lorna Hinson. Seductive. Dangerous. Sexy. Girls with fangs, women who hunt vampires, lovers who only come in the dark of the night. Vamps are not just female vampires; they're femmes fatales. They're the women your mother warned you about, and the things that go bump in the night. They're beautiful and terrible, loving and disdainful. Nine stories that range from historical to modern and from hard-boiled mystery to fantasy explore the world of the female vampire. They're strippers and goddesses, bluestockings and hippies, but they all have one thing in common. Lust. Lust for blood, and lust for life, or maybe unlife. All of the night stalkers in Vamps are ready and willing to find a good time. Some of the best authors in lesbian erotica and romance are here, spinning tales about the dark world of creatures of the night, and about the women who love them, women who are drawn to the power and freedom that the vampire embodies. Vamps features stories from: Shanna Germain, Tracey Shellito, Teresa Noelle Roberts, Penelope Friday, JT Langdon, Erin O'Riordan, Mercy Loomis, Kate Cotoner, and Elizabeth Black. Vamp up your life a little today!
Please note: I have to have some way of getting in touch with you if you win. If I cannot easily find your e-mail address by clicking on your user name, please leave an e-mail address in your comment. I suggest using the "erinoriordan AT sbcglobal DOT net" format so that spambots won't come across your addy.
Kamillia, the heroine of Kiki Howell’s A Modern Day Witch Hunt (eXcessica Publishing, 2009), is like a female version of Harry Potter, mixed with Sookie Stackhouse and Sarah Connor.
Kamillia, as far as she knows, is a fantasy writer. Like Harry Potter, she has no idea of her true powers. She’s a witch, just as her parents were. Like Harry, Kamillia lost her parents to an evil group of dark wizards. Like Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse, Kamillia can read minds, an ability that has made it difficult for her to fit in with others. Like Sookie, the orphaned Kamillia was raised by a fiercely honest, deeply beloved grandmother.
Luca, a Watcher who appears to be eternally twenty-five years old, was sent to protect her. This part of the story reminds me of Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor in the original Terminator movie. Like Kyle and Sarah, Luca and Kamillia are headed down an inevitable path of attraction. Unlike Kyle, Luca sees colorful auras swirling around human beings. He’s acutely sensitive to emotions, and the way human emotions affect the world around them.
The sex? Scorching, yet still achingly romantic and mystical. The sadness? Just as overwhelming. Although Luca and Kamillia feel an inexorable attraction to one another, his job as a Watcher, watching over the river of life, means he will inevitable have to leave her. When Kamillia and Luca must travel to Florence, Italy, they learn their lives have been linked for centuries. Are they destined to be star-crossed lovers for eternity, or will the universe finally let them be together? It will take a powerful kind of magic to right the wrongs that have been done to them, but Luca just might know a way.
A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris
_new.jpg)
.jpg)
