Hot Blooded – Anthology Review

Contains novellas by Christine Feehan, Maggie Shayne, Emma Holly, and Angela Knight.

So, a year or three ago, I picked up an anthology called Fantasy, headlined by Feehan. I must confess I was still feeling a bit snobbish about vampire fiction and found it all kind of silly. I don’t think I finished most of the stories.

Times change, my friends, and so does reading taste. I had some leftover reluctance for Hot Blooded, due to the similarity of cover art and two of the same authors as Fantasy… plus, I have to admit, as the month draws to a close, I’m getting kind of burned out on anthologies.

But I was pleasantly surprised. Given that I have surrendered my disbelief on the vampire subject in general, I was in a much more receptive frame of mind for these stories and really enjoyed them. As a whole, each author did a good job of limiting the world-building complexities to just what was needed for the novella. Since I’m not a follower of any of these series, that was definitely a concern.

I mean, I could tell there was a lot going on in the Carpathian universe that I don’t (yet?) know about. Frankly, I think most modern authors who have ditched the whole “going to ground” element of vampire mythology have done the right thing, because I found that fairly offputting, and there were more loose ends hanging than I would accept from a full-length book, but that is sort of the nature of writing a series, I guess. All in all though, it was an engaging story that I was able to read and enjoy with zero external grounding (heh, sorry, groan) in Carpathian lore. For whatever reason, I continue to resist Feehan as an author, but I’m strongly tempted to cherry-pick through her backlist to see if I can find out what goes on with the secondary female characters in this story.

Maggie Shayne had an entry in Wild Thing, which I liked but didn’t love—it was clearly a part of an ongoing series and I had some other issues with it (review pending). What she did right with the Hot Blooded novella, Awaiting Moonrise, was to make it a completely stand-alone story. If it’s part of some other series, I can’t tell. The hero is a loner, the victim of a generations-old voodoo curse, and not part of a pack, pride, clan, patria, gaggle or seraglio of other Others, so there is less of a societal fabric that the reader needs to be oriented on. One nitpick would be the behavior of the hero when she first meets him—he’s a doctor, and behaves improperly. I don’t care if it did make her hot, it pissed me off. (Maybe it works for people with medical fetishes, I don’t know, those gross me out.) Other than that though, Shayne does the insta-heat thing pretty well, a visceral connection between the hero and heroine; there’s a little bit of a bad guy, a little bit of voodoo, and ultimately a happy ending.

Emma Holly… oh my. It’s shaping up to be a love-hate thing with me and her. After loving her historical, and hating the weird alien thing in Hot Spell, I was pleasantly surprised by The Night Owl (nothing to do with actual owls, by the way.) This was everything a romantic novella should be. It is the story of two people falling in lusty, sexy love, and very little more. It is part of Holly’s upyr series, which I snubbed those years ago, and it helps that the vampire lore is fairly standard: they drink blood, they “turn” humans (though their society has restrictions on this to prevent detection), they can’t bear sunlight and hang out in basements during daylight hours. There was some minor villainy, dealt with in a satisfactory way, but overall it’s the story of how Bastien has to take some risks to win Mariann over to the dark side, so to speak. If I have a complaint, I would say that there wasn’t much development of the relationship, per se. We get a good feel for both Mariann and Bastien (a bit later), but not so much why he falls in love with her. That’s just sort of as writ. Though I have to admit, if I (let’s assume, an unmarried version of me) were to experience that kind of mind-blowing sex, I’d probably convert to whatever, too. Just sayin’.

Angela Knight. Hmmm. What can you say about a universe that incorporates human legends through time by making them *actual* Mages, furthermore, a premise that requires the female counterparts to such legends to be fucked into their full potential by said Mages. Yes readers, Mage semen is magically delicious. If some guy chats you up in a bar and promises you immortality in exchange for a weekend in Cabo, he might be an Angela Knight fan. Despite the absolutely preposterous premise, I liked the characters quite a bit; the sex scenes were creative, athletic, funny, and still very very hott, although I did sort of feel like I should have a bowm-chicka-bowm-bowm soundtrack playing in the background.

Shifter – Anthology Review

Maybe it’s just been on my mind lately, the question of consent, seduction, romance. Of being carried away, even if it’s irrational, even if it’s a bit – or more than a bit – dangerous, even if it’s inconvenient. But there was a common thread in this collection revolving around choice and will that seemed to really jump out at me.

*In Angela Knight’s Mad Dog Love, a space opera about a politically oppressed princess and an enslaved werewolf, technology has given each person a nanosystem of molecule-sized robots flowing in their bloodstreams, that help fight disease, bolster strength, and house libraries of information. But when hacked or controlled externally, they can turn a person’s body into a puppet at the mercy of the programmer. In this particular story, it was more of an external plot device than something used in the romance, but you can see how easily it could take that turn.

*In Lora Leigh’s “A Jaguar’s Kiss,” the biologically engineered Breed subrace is characterized by, among other things, a heightened mating imperative. When a Breed recognizes his mate, his body begins producing high levels of a particular hormone which can be transmitted via fluids, ie, a kiss. The hormone, to put it bluntly, makes both parties unbearably horny for each other and unable to tolerate the touch of another. In this novella, the heroine, Natalie, receives this hormone completely unknowing of its implications.

*Virginia Kantra’s “Sea Crossing” tells of a young 19th-century schoolteacher, fallen from grace, who is leaving England for indentured servitude in Canada. A community of selkies, elemental sea creatures, arrange matters to bring Emma to their island to teach their adolescent population, teenagers on the brink of their first Change:

”You were needed.” His eyes pleaded with her for understanding. “And you’ve been happy here. Emma—“

“But I didn’t have a choice! Those poor people who lost everything on the ship didn’t have a choice! I may be human and mortal and insignificant, but I know we deserve a choice.” He was looking at her as if she were the monster, as if she were a strange, rare beast who might suddenly sprout fur and flippers and swim away.

“A choice,” he repeated.

Her chest felt tight. She stuck out her chin. “Yes.”

He nodded slowly. “Very well. I will speak to my lord. Tomorrow, after you have said good-bye to the children, I will take you wherever you want to go.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open. Her chest caved in.

Fantastic.

What I liked about these stories though, is that regardless of the circumstances that brought the h/h together and their feelings around whatever deliberate manipulation or deception happened, in each of the four stories, the resolution required each character to choose to stay, to make the commitment, to explicitly decide that they wanted the other.

Some did it better than others. This anthology popped my Lora Leigh Breed cherry, so to speak, though I’ve heard an awful lot about them. Frankly, I wasn’t that impressed.

(Saban says…) “I’ve burned for you through the days and the nights. I’ve ached for your touch, and even that you would not give me. I flirted, I teased. I did everything those fucking books said a man should do, and nothing worked.”

Natalie stared back at him, confused, uncertain. “And you thought throwing me into this would?” she finally asked bitterly. “That forcing my compliance was the only step left? You forced this on me, Saban. How is it any different than rape?”

How was it different? His lips opened, fury pounded in his head that she would think such a thing, that she could ever believe that he would force such a choice from—

Saban felt it then, the knowledge, the certainty, from her point of view, that it was exactly what he had done. He had given in to his own frustration, his anger at her defiance, his hunger, and he had unleashed it on her in a way that she could never fight, one that she could never escape.”

Nice, huh? I mean, I guess it’s OK if he was REALLY REALLY hot for her, then it’s different, right? Even this revelation is qualified: “from her point of view.” Now, I realize this hormone thing is fictional, but given that premise, it was rape from ANY point of view. Maybe worse than rape, because there is no out, no escape, no support group, no 12-step program. The fact that Saban gets it holds out some promise, but then it all gets wiped away because Natalie realizes that actually? She was asking for it, so it was her fault:

(Natalie says…) “It’s not the same as rape.”

Saban clenched his teeth and fought the need to fist his hands.

“You decided this for what reason?” He lowered the grill lid and watched it, as though in watching it he could make it heat and burn away the shame inside him.

“Because I already suspected the truth of it,” she finally said. “I knew it existed and I pushed anyway because you were frustrating the hell out of me.”

Oh, OK. Since she was attracted to him, it isn’t really rape. Got it. Yuck.

I picked up this particular anthology for the Alyssa Day story, and liked it well enough. Not as complex or dark as the full length novels, but good characters, and I’m just OCD enough to need to read it because it’s part of the overall series arc.

I also liked the selkie story quite a lot; I don’t think I’m going to be able to resist picking up Sea Witch after the little teaser at the end.

The big surprise for me was the Angela Knight story. Futuristic, techy sci-fi space opera is probably my least favorite sub-genre, with or without romance; however, I’m a total sucker for compelling characters and Knight drew me in instantly. Within 20 pages, she establishes two unique main characters with compelling motivations; the ruthless depths of the primary villain, and an irresistible storyline where we’re already wondering who can be trusted and who has betrayed whom. Fabulous! And hey, how often do we get a good zero-gravity sex scene? I had my doubts about some of the technical details, but what the hell, it was good clean dirty fun anyway.