New Reader Program: Retro Reads

Are you a fan of "old-skool" romance? Crushing kisses, kidnapped heroines and all?  Open Road Media is launching a new program and looking for reader/reviewers for their new line of old treasures.

"PASSION MAY FADE...
GREAT ROMANCE LASTS FOREVER"

Retro Reads is a reader program specializing in digitally reissued romance novels. We are looking for a group of readers interested in exploring the full range of romance—readers who love the genre, who love talking about the genre, and who want to keep up with the latest digital releases.

You don't have to have your own blog to participate; you can post your reviews on GoodReads or a retail site.  If you're interested, check out the details for participation at the Open Road Media post.  You'll need a NetGalley account.  Good luck!

The Demoness of Waking Dreams, by Stephanie Chong - Review

Image downloaded from stephaniechong.com

Information: 
Title: The Demoness of Waking Dreams
Author: Stephanie Chong
Publisher: Harlequin
Imprint: Mira
Series Name: Company of Angels
Reviewing: Mass Market Paperback, provided by publicist in return for a fair review

Why I Read It 
I received the book from a publicist that I have an ongoing working relationship with, and was intrigued by the premise.

The Short Answer
Wow, I LOVE this author.  The narrative is flawless; it just flows beautifully and pulls you along, smooth as a Venetian gondolier.  I love the exotic setting of Venice; the elegant, old world facade and the competing undercurrent of decay and vice. 

Series Handicap: 
I give it a two of five.  This is book 2 of the series and there are some references to a backstory between Luciana and the hero of the first book. I haven't read the first one and I thought there was enough information to fully follow the story at hand, but the backstory of some of the other characters is definitely a factor for Luciana. I will be going back and reading book 1 for sure; it sounds delicious. 


The Premise
This is an Angels and Demons mythology, infused with old-world Catholicism.  It reminded me a little bit of Meljean Brook's Demon Angel, since it also featured a female demon and a male angel. While Brook's mythology had some complex series arcs going on, this story seemed very focused on the two protagonists, set into seemingly irreconcilable conflict.

Whenever I read paranormal fiction about immortal characters, I'm always interested to see how the author handles the concepts of danger and harm - it's kind of hard to build suspense if there is no potential for significant physical harm, not to mention that if you eliminate pain, you logically eliminate pleasure too, which can make executing a romance kind of tricky.  Chong's approach, for the angels at least, is that the general rank and file, which our hero belongs to, remain essentially corporeal, needing food, sleep, and at least recuperation time from physical damage.  They also experience pain and pleasure.

Similarly, I love when an author can bring something new to the treatment of the sexual elements in a romance -- and no, I'm not talking about exotic positions or toys or fetishes.  (Though I'm not saying those are bad things...)  Sex is always a part of romantic love, but it may or may not be all that important to a particular story, or character, or plot.

In Demoness, corporeal love plays an important role.  It underpins the entire dialog between good and evil, sin and divinity.  Luciana's fall from grace involved sex and seduction; her ongoing tribute to the Prince of Darkness is accomplished through the seduction of the innocent (or close enough...)

In that moment, he knew the absolute and utter rightness of sexual connection, of the pure and unadulterated pleasure of it, a celebration of the divine. Demoness or not, she was still essentially a part of the divine, irrespective of who or what she thought she was.

"A celebration of the divine."  Yeah.  I love that.  Our culture is too filled with messages about the "sins of the flesh," and sex-positive literature is very often scrupulously separated from any kind of commentary about faith.  This book is the exception, and I find that very refreshing.

I give this new (to me) author a strong recommend.

........................................................

Postscript
As you may have noticed, the blog has been pretty quiet.  I actually received this book quite some time ago, before the release date.  (Sometimes I find it hard to write up a review for a book I really REALLY like, because I have to figure out how to do it justice.  I need to get a little more up close and personal with the Nike motto).

So anyway, to help motivate me to get this post finished, I got my hands on the first book of the series, Where Angels Fear to Tread.  This book introduces Luciana, and to be totally honest, she is much creepier and more horrible in the first book.  I might not have been as willing to see her redeemed in the second book if I had read them in order.  The horror is not terribly graphic, but it's pretty... well... horrible.

I liked the second book better for a couple of reasons: 1) I think a bad-girl/good-boy story is much fresher than the inverse, which has been done SO many times; 2) I found Luciana's voice to be way more interesting than Serena's; and 3) I just like Venice as a setting so much more than Las Vegas.  It may also be a case of a new author hitting her stride with a second book. I didn't have any particular problems with the writing, per se, in WAFTT.  The story overall was just a bit less compelling to me.

Around the Blogosphere
Rabid Reads (oo, new-to-me blog!)
Book Chick City (she makes a good point about the way the book ends which I have not addressed here)
Dear Author
Heroes and Heartbreakers

A Certain Style

Shitkickers planted defiantly on the IKEA pressboard pile in front of her, glass of Trader Joe's finest three-buck chuck red at her elbow, Reader cracked her neck to one side then the other, the snap-crackle-pop action saying all that needed to be said about her day job in the cubicle mines.

She picked up the e-reader.  Ran a finger down the soft, aniline-dyed purple leather cover and gave it a narrow-eyed look.  Clicked it on and suffered the inexplicable delay while it came to life.  One of these days, she promised herself, she'd find the right neck at Amazon and have a little heart to heart about device latency, because goddamn.  There's just no reason for that.

The list of unread items swam into view and she settled a little deeper into the Scotch-guarded cushions.  Thinking about titles. And authors.  Sometimes it all felt so hollow.  There were so many of them.  And she loved them, she really did, each and every one... while they lasted.  (Well, mostly.)  But was all worth it for those rare few that brought the magic.  The shift.  Taking her out of the routine of work-eat-chores-sleep, and transforming her into powerful, otherworldly creatures, human and otherwise, who lived larger than life.

Yeah, the shift.

She could really use that after the week she'd had, but the odds seemed low.  Just hadn't been feelin' it lately.

Her ice-blue eyes scanned the list again and she let them land on a name she'd lingered over before, but hadn't taken to the next level.  Coreene Callahan had first made an impression at RT2012 - the female was pure energy, passing up fellow conventioneers with her staccato stride down the beige hotel corridors; her sassy blond coif flipping as she talked over her shoulder to her slower companions.  All Reader had caught from that was "my dragons," but it was enough.  Enough to find out more....

................................

OK, I just can't keep that up any more (it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time to do a whole post in that style.... but as it turns out, nope).  What I'm trying to say here, is that Callahan has a very familiar style, and if you're into JR Ward, you will recognize it, right down to the shitkickers and referring to the women as "females;" a violent transition from apparently-normal-human to super-powerful paranormal being, which requires an intense, life-threatening feeding session and hopefully an equally intense sexual encounter.  She also does the "civilian/human outsider cop caught up in the warrior world" book.  So far no one has crawled off to die in a cave, but you'll also recognize the bonded mate thing.

So, lots of similarities.  I have panned authors before for series that were too copycat for my taste, and this one is even MORE similar in a lot of ways, but somehow I just liked it anyway.  I love the dragon shifters; the action/fight scenes are intense and well-choreographed (a challenge to do in mid-air); and what can I say, I'm a sucker for the stories where the toughest guys fall the hardest for their women.

Recommend!

WINNER!

I should just change the name of this blog to "better late than never," because that's pretty much how I roll.

The winner, chosen at random is....

JULIE H!!

Incoming to your gmail account also. 

Contest Update!

The giveaway is official now!

I'll work on coming up with something nice to stuff in that extra little space. :-)

Most of the titles are brand new, but a few are pre-owned.  The Julia Quinn and Anna Campbell are from my personal library and are a little extra-well-loved. 

Remember to enter by commenting on the official blog post below, NOT this post. :-)

Paranormals:
Joss Ware, Beyond the Night
Juliana Stone, Wicked Road to Hell
Pamela Palmer, A Blood Seduction
Karina Cooper, Tarnished

Historicals:
Donna Fletcher, A Warrior's Promise
Liz Carlyle, The Bride Wore Pearls
Cathy Maxwell, Lyon's Bride (I just finished this one and the second in the series and really liked!)
Miranda Neville, Confessions from an Arranged Marriage
Julia Quinn, Everything and the Moon
Eloisa James, The Ugly Duchess
Anna Campbell, My Reckless Surrender

Links go to my reviews on Alpha Heroes.

Avon Addict Blog Hop!

Ack!  I'm tardy! I thought my day was tomorrow {facepalm}.

If you followed the hop links here, I'm so glad you stopped by!


If you're a regular Alpha Heroes reader and didn't know about the Hop, please check out the Blog Hop Home Page at Pure Textuality (and BIG BIG thanks to Jena for organizing), and if you haven't been to the prior hoppers, I highly recommend it!

Kristi Bug
SOS Aloha
Save Your Money for Books
Toot's Book Reviews

**************

I have to admit, I have never paid much attention to the publishers of my favorite books, and especially not before I started blogging.  Mostly I only noticed that, when a favorite author switches houses, often a large chunk of her previous titles would disappear from that listing you usually see on the leader pages inside their books.

Because of the Authors
I am reader with a lot of author loyalty.   When I find a writer I like I'll track down her backlist and stalk her new releases.  I'll check out her blog, "like" her Facebook page, and, as of this year, look for her Twitter account.

So when it turned out that some of my all-time favorite historical authors are in the Avon family, I couldn't help but jump on the Addict program: Julia Quinn, Loretta Chase, Lisa Kleypas, Lecia Cornwell, and Anna Campbell.  Not only that, but I am absolutely an old-skool romance lover and titles from Kathleen Woodiwiss, Bertrice Small and Rosemary Rogers -- Fabio covers and all -- hooked me on the genre thoroughly from the very beginning.  It's an absolute thrill to be involved with all these wonderful writers and their legacies.

Avon has a great list of contemporary and paranormal authors, but I have to say that I feel like their strength is in the Regencies.  It's a really crowded market but Avon has some of the best out there -- writers whose characters and historical texturing stand out, in my opinion.  Some of the new loves of my life in historical fiction that Avon introduced me to (in no particular order) are:

Sarah MacLean
Katherine Ashe
Sophia Nash
Cathy Maxwell
Julie Ann Long

I'll post my giveaway package when I get home but I can tell you that it will include copies from at least 4 of the 5 ladies above (I can't remember whether I got a physical book from Julie Ann Long or only ebooks) PLUS a few extra goodies.

If you've been reading here long, you may recall that I treated myself to the RT Convention in Chicago in April of this past year, which was an utterly AMAZING experience.  Exhausting, yes, but wow, so much fun.  Note, this is NOT a perk of the Addict program, but something I was planning to do anyway.

However, the wonderful people at Avon DID include me and the other Addict who attended in a  fabulous dinner event with all of the Avon authors and several of the industry folks who were there.  I didn't take any photos because I didn't want the authors to feel uncomfortable; it was clearly an event meant to give the authors a bit of a respite from the crazy fan hordes at the conference.  I sat at a table with Jeaniene Frost and Pamela Palmer and we mostly talked about monster movies.

At the con itself, there were a number of events but the Avon one blew them all out of the water for being just what I as a reader wanted -- super-well-organized, lots of great books, and access to my favorite authors.

I wouldn't want to end this post without talking about a couple of the paranormal authors that Avon publishes - Joss Ware writes one of the more unusual paranormal romance series that you're ever going to find, and I have to admit that I really love them.

The other paranormal author I wanted to highlight is Karina Cooper. There isn't much I love more than discovering the first book of a new paranormal series, and when we got an advanced ecopy of Tarnished back in March, it was one of the reasons I bought an e-reader.  This is a creepy dark steampunky UF series that you do NOT want to miss.  THEN she turns out to be local to me, so I stalked her at the Seattle area RWA book fair too.

My goodie box will definitely include something from these two favorites.  There may or may not be an author signed copy involved.

I'll upload a photo of the giveaway package probably tomorrow morning.  Comment on THIS POST for a chance to win a whole whack of fabulous Avon titles -- you have until noon on Monday, Pacific Time. 

Lifecycle of a Blog

Today is the fifth anniversary of Alpha Heroes' inaugural post.  Five years!  Whoa.  If a year in a dog's life is like seven in human years, what is a blog-year like?

I think it was somewhere on Facebook that I shared the thought that this blog may be entering menopause: my posting is a lot slower than it used to be; it's erratic, subject to brief flashes of genius, random delusions of normality, and long sullen silences. 

But also, I have some benefit of experience.  I know what I'm interested in doing, and what I'm not going to bother with. I have some surprising contacts after doing this for so long and done some cool stuff, like go to RT, participate in Avon Addicts, and host pop-culture academics for Q&A.  Like that one aunt that you only see at Thanksgiving, I talk sometimes even when no one is listening.  And often, I ignore the stuff that everyone else is talking about, either because I'm not interested or I have nothing of particular interest to say. (Or I might be napping.  I'm not drooling, am I?)  I'm not as concerned with appearances-- haven't changed my template in I think, three years now, but that's because it's classy and timeless like Katherine Hepburn *pets template* yes you are. 

I'm pretty sure I've started to repeat myself, which is one reason I blog less - it's harder to come up with new stuff to say.  In the interest of embracing that though, please have a look at my new "Best Of" tab up top, especially if you're new-ish to Alpha Heroes.  Or if you're a loyal fan and would like to relive the good times, like the montage show at the end of a season.

So if there's an AARP for blogs, I'm pretty sure I'm eligible.  But both my grandmother and her mother lived to the century mark, so if genetics are anything to go by, I'll be doddering around here for quite some time.