Sunday Soup: December 2, 2018

In The Soup This Week... Oliver Willis, Chuck Wendig, Sam Sykes, Rachel Caine, JR Ward, Ilona Andrews

Soup Dish:  personal dish; on my mind; good links
It's been a while since I dished, so I'll take a few minutes to catch you up on what's going on with me...

✽ I'm in the midst of a temporary health challenge that has me off work for several months. I have lots of time for reading and reviewing, though the illness comes with some challenges to energy and focus. So far I think I can say the blog is coming out a little bit ahead on the equation. 

✽ If you've been reading here for awhile, you might recall that I've been trying to get myself to read a bit more (some? any?) non-fiction, and it's been quite the uphill road. I've figured out the solution: audiobooks. Generally I do not like listening to talk radio, or talking-head TV. I never thought I'd like audiobooks, but it turns out that a good narrator is able to bring non-fiction to life in a way that my inner reader-voice cannot. I don't really want to dilute my brand here on the blog so when I choose to review those, I'm putting them over on Goodreads.

✽ So I mentioned before, I had been reviewing for the last few years for RT Book Reviews.  With their closing,   I'm selectively choosing a few books off of Netgalley and other sources for review, but my self-discipline has never been great.  I am forcing myself to review everything I have open there before picking new ones.  So you're going to occasionally see reviews for older releases, but hey, why not.

✽I wrote this bit (slightly updated) almost a year ago and never posted, but the links are worth checking out if you haven't seen them: Twitter is evolving. There have been threadrolls and Storifications and so on before but I've never seen anything quite like what Oliver Willis has done, and it is insanely good (the whole project is available as a novella on Amazon - I recommend it, assuming your politics align). However, before Willis launched this masterpiece, we had Yo Can You Help Me Out from Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig, which I 100% adore. I was not the only one, so there have been a few more of these epic dialogs unfold, like the Lovecraftian Hey How's It Going; a hellish goat pyramid scheme in "Yo Hey You Busy."


What I'm reading
I just can't get enough Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance lately. Having some trouble getting into historical or contemporary-- bring on the werewolves, vampires, witches and magic! 

✽Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series. I've had a number of these paperbacks around for a couple years now and I decided to get serious. I binged the first 5 books but got a little stuck on the 6th. Probably just needed a wee break. I'm enjoying them and hoping to write up a series review when I finish them.

✽Jeffe Kennedy's Dasnaria Chronicles. The third in the trilogy, Warrior of the World, is due out in early January. Look for a rave review from me as we get closer, but I've enjoyed the whole trilogy (oh hey, looks like the first in the trilogy, Prisoner of the Crown, is on sale for $0.99 -- do yourself a favor and snap it up), as well as the latest in the Uncharted Realms series, Arrows of the Heart.

✽I went back to my PNR roots and grabbed the most recent Black Dagger Brotherhood book, The Thief (when I noticed the price had come down). I liked it, but I felt a little let down with Sola's character. I liked her so much in the early parts of their arc but she didn't quite hit the high notes for me overall. The Jane and V arc worked fine for me, though I'm finding these original-brothers'-marriages-in-crises arcs to be getting a little stale/repetitive.

✽Last but definitely not least, I grabbed the latest Hidden Legacy (Ilona Andrews) book, a novella titled Diamond Fire, about Nevada's younger sister Catalina. Predictably, I loved it a lot and it inspired a re-read of the whole preceding trilogy. These are so, so good.


That's it for this week. Happy reading!

ps -- apologies for the wonky font situation. My HTML is befuckered and I have run out of patience trying to deal with it.  Sigh.

Happy New Year!

Yeah, so I haven't written a blog post since the election.  Social media has been nearly unbearable for me, and my reading has been divided between diving into my favorite escape, reading think-pieces on politics, and mindlessly playing solitaire puzzle games on my phone.

So I've been reading, a lot, but I have not been very present in the online community.  Ramping back into that always takes a bit of energy. But I'm going to try!

A few highlights - my favorites from the last couple months:

✽I have a big (for me) home project in process: I'm switching my office for my daughter's bedroom. That might not sound like much, but my office is packed full of 10 years worth of partially finished craft projects, girl scout projects, scrapbooking and quilting supplies. Both rooms needed painting, and finding space to hold all the STUFF while the swap is in progress has been painful. Bottom line is, I figured it was a good time to try audio books. I went with a YA series, thinking my daughter might like to listen along, and chose Kresley Cole's Arcana series. OMG this is good. I started it around Thanksgiving and yeah, something post-apocalyptic seemed just right. It verges on too violent for me, with some really f*cked-up torture scenes, but the story is like, steel bear-trap gripping, and I love the characters. I'm caught up in the series; the next isn't due out until next summer, and I can't get it out of my head. It's a very compelling love-triangle premise, so if you hate those, this is going to be a conundrum for you.

✽I figured that I owed it to myself to read a few sure things, so I grabbed books in Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vampires, and Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series. I am not caught up there yet which makes me happy in a weird sort of way, because I can pick up another EXCELLENT book any time I want.

✽Last year about this time, I got my first taste of a Rachel Caine series, and it was awesome, so I decided to dive into the Weather Wardens. Well, I read the first book and loved it. Hmm, picking up the next book in that series might be just the thing for my first 2017 read.

✽Amid my towering stacks of book swag from RT16 and other cons, I found two Rebecca Zanetti titles, from two different series. I am on a bit of a post-apocalyptic kick right now, so I gotta say, the Scorpius series is hitting all the right notes for me. Forgotten Sins was also really good, but I have to say the hero skirted the alph-hole line pretty close for me.

✽Last for today, J. R. Ward's Blood Vow lived up to all my expectations. I'm really happy with the spinoff series.

Look at that -- all my favorites were paranormals. I do have a few contemps and historicals I could talk about, but I'll save those for another time.

Sunday Soup - December 6

In The Soup This Week... JR Ward, Ilona Andrews, Caroline Linden, Shelly Bell, and Jayne Ann Krentz

Soup Dish:  on my mind
✽It's been a busy week. I'm getting a lot of holiday shopping done; a lot of reading, and a lot of thinking about the social and political happenings. There's a lot going on out there.

✽I've referred to Jayne Ann Krentz's Bowling Green speech a few times over the course of this blog, and at some point, sadly, it was taken down off the web.  In this week's interview, she alludes to some of the same material, about popular fiction celebrating heroic values (in the classical sense), and why that's the reason it's both popular and persistent.

✽Here's a pop-science approach to male characteristics that have been proven in studies to be attractive to (het) women.  Of course, none of these will surprise readers of romance, since pretty much all of them feature frequently in hero descriptions.  Although the "limbal ring" is some new vocabulary for me.

✽Book Riot always delivers, this time with some really lovely editions of classics for the young readers on your list

What I'm reading
✽JR Ward's Blood Kiss was.... ready?.... fan-freakin'-tastic.  Best thing she's written since before Phury.  I really really liked the "weed-out" scenes for the trainees.  If you're not up to speed, Blood Kiss is the first in a spinoff (that isn't really a spinoff?) series from the Black Dagger Brotherhood, that follows a younger generation of vampires who have signed up to be trained to help defend the race.  The characters are post-trans, unlike the early training days of John Matthew, Blaylock, Quinn, and Lash, which was a good choice IMO.  Some of the characters have a certain recycled feel, but overall I am very happy with this book. Great central couple, a secondary arc with Butch and Marissa, just the right amount of sequel-baiting, and a welcome lack of other multiple arcs.  A bit shorter than what we've gotten used to from JR Ward, but by no means skimpy at 350 pages or so.  Strong recommend.

✽What could possibly follow that act? Why, Ilona Andrews' Sweep In Peace, of course. I really loved the first book and this one was just wonderful. The magic is just so intriguing. I'd say this stands alone reasonably well, but they're both so good, if you haven't read Clean Sweep, you won't regret picking it up.   And while we're on the topic, Andrews' has an excerpt from the upcoming Kate Daniels novella posted on their site -- Chapter 1, Magic Stars.

✽Written in My Heart, by Caroline Linden, was a sweet little short. At 33 pages, it's more of a vignette than a fully-realized story, as there is no real conflict other than distance. It's full of longing and sweet, innocent love and made a wonderful palate cleanser between darker more intense stories.

✽I also read last week's featured author, Shelly Bell's, first installment in her White-Collared serial. I've been avoiding serials in general, because I'm not a big fan of cliff-hangers and the pricing can be a little off-putting when you add everything up.  I might be coming around though.  Mercy has good characters, great sexual tension, and while the ending does make you want to read on, the story itself had a satisfying resolution, even though there is an open series arc. So like everything else that I sometimes avoid or sometime seek out based on a format or trope, it [almost] always boils down to how well the author executes. I'm not exactly sure how the whole series is structured, but the first installment opens with a graphic torture/murder scene and kicks off an arc regarding the husband of the victim, his lawyer, and his legal intern.

That's it for me this week. Hope you are enjoying the holiday season!

Sunday Soup - August 22

In The Soup This Week... Gaiman and Ishiguru, John Scalzi, Ilona Andrews and more...

Soup Dish:  on my mind
✽ One of the best articles on genre I've ever read: Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro : Let's Talk About Genre.  Ishiguro is not an author I typically read, but the book that prompted this discussion, The Buried Giant, just went to the top of my "acquire and read" list.  There's so much good material in this article, I could pull quotes from it all day long, but this one is probably my favorite, from Ishiguro:

I don’t have a problem, necessarily, about reading for improvement. I often choose a book because I think I’m going to enjoy it, but I think also it’s going to improve me in some sense. But when you ask yourself, “Is this going to improve me?” what are you really asking? I think I probably do turn to books for some sort of spiritual and intellectual nourishment: I think I’m going to learn something about the world, about people. But if by “improving”, we mean it would help me go up the class ladder, then it’s not what reading and writing should be about.

✽A major highlight this week was seeing John Scalzi speak.  I recently (about a year ago) made a move to work for Microsoft in Redmond, and the company hosted a private session.  Scalzi spoke about the similarities between science fiction and high tech work - which incidentally, Ishiguro also brings up in the article above.  A little personal synchronicity, perhaps.  Scalzi also spoke about his choices to speak up about inclusivity and I've got to tell you, I could not like this guy more.  On a lighter note, I have to say that one big highlight was an impromptu Shatner impersonation. 

✽A couple of book-ish blog post that caught my attention this week:

• Phyl (one of my most ancient online friendships!) on the Hardcopied challenge. Which  a topic that interests me quite a bit.  I might check out the next challenge round.
• I always enjoy Pamela's posts, and her latest is no different. In depth, thoughtful, no spoilers but an enticing description of In Wilderness, by Diane Thomas.
• I really liked Francesca's musing on the evolution of her reading taste, over at Under The Covers book blog.

What I'm reading
✽I still have the paranormal and the Regency in progress that I mentioned last week.  Their likelihood of becoming a DNF is growing. I've also got one for review that I really can't DNF that I really want to. #reviewerproblems

✽When you get stuck like that, the best thing to do is to pick up a sure thing. Ilona Andrews just released the latest in the Kate Daniels series and that would fit the bill perfectly. When I went to buy it though, I realized that I hadn't picked up the previous one yet, so Magic Breaks was my choice. The great thing about that is, as soon as I finish the review book and the review, I am going to reward myself with Magic Shifts. I should add that I dearly loved the short story with Julie as the main character at the end, and I am looking forward to more!


✽From the RT14 thumbdrive, I read The Sixth Lover, by Alice Gaines, which was quite good. If you have a fondness for Victorian erotica (authentic or "in the style of"), you'll enjoy this piece. It has much of the style of that genre, but without the non-con aspect and with enough of a plot and emotional content to remain engaging beyond the erotic scenes.

✽Ever since I did the Antholopalooza years ago, I stay on the watch for inexpensive print anthologies.  I keep one in my car at all times for time-killing emergencies.  Recently I found The Other Side, anchored by JD Robb, for a dollar at Half Price Books.  I needed something to read but didn't want to start a full novel, so I read The Other Side of the Coin by Mary Blayney, a new-to-me author. It was a short story about a Regency couple who swapped bodies, courtesy of a mysterious coin, a la Freaky Friday. Not bad, but it didn't blow me away.  Cute premise, a nice emotional wrap-up, but an awful lot of internal narrative "telling."

Sunday Soup - March 16

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...
At my house, March madness doesn't have anything to do with basketball:  it's all about the Girl Scout Cookies. Starting in late February, my house becomes the Cookie Depot for our troop, which is quite large-- we have about 30 girls this year.  I got the last of the cookies out of my house yesterday, and now just need to square up the accounting -- also, super fun!  Anyway, it's all for a good cause.

Then there's St. Patrick's Day.  Our family is not in the least Irish, nor are we in a particularly Irish community, but this year we decided to decorate a little bit, which entailed power tools and spray paint... I'm exhausted just thinking about it.  I put up a little faux mantel on one wall and my younger daughter and I decorated it.  It's probably kind of lame that that took up as much brain-space as it did, but it is what it is.

Anyway, on to Book Things!

✽How Public Libraries Are Solving America's Reading Problem Really good article, with really good news, IMO. How the publishing revolution is offering libraries a new life. Via the twitter feed of Seattle Book News.  

✽Anonymous reviews -- Two items in the news recently; first a petition endorsed by Anne Rice to remove the ability to leave anonymous reviews at Amazon.  Her endorsement can be found on her public Facebook page. Second, a major Australian paper announced that they will be publishing their professional reviews pseudonymously. Good summary article here.

My thoughts are mixed here.  Mostly I do not attempt to keep my reviewing identity secret, because I am just paranoid enough and just tech savvy enough to know that if someone really wanted to out me, it's just not that hard to do so.  Therefore, I started from the very beginning with the decision that I would not put anything online that I am not willing to have my name attached to, for any reason.  (The one place that this really inhibits me--heh-- from posting is discussions about erotica.  I would say things anonymously that I'm not really willing to have out there in front of the world.)

Amazon's review system is troubled, for sure.  I don't pay much attention to reviews or average stars.  I go more by word of mouth and reading an excerpt for myself, but there's no doubt that those ratings and reviews influence sales, for better and for worse.  It's a shame that some people have nothing better to do than to game the system.

✽Do you use photos in your blog? then this is BIG NEWS: Free Use of Images from Getty. If you read the fine print, you may find that once again, there's no such thing as a free lunch:

once the images are embedded, Getty has much more control over the images. The new embeds are built on the same iframe code that lets you embed a tweet or a YouTube video, which means the company can use embeds to plant ads or collect user information.

To be honest, that pretty much seems worth it to me, but your mileage may vary. Via Dear Author's Twitter feed.

Author News
Interesting stuff from some of my favorites!

✽Charlotte Stein's newest release is with a new Avon line -- I'm gonna need to check out both.

✽Ilona Andrews announces new book, new series, and new publisher -- very exciting.

✽Chloe Neill also has a new series beginning.

What I'm reading

✽Apples Should Be Red, a subversive, salty little novella by Penny Watson.  This is a second-chance romance, with characters edging into senior citizen territory. I have more to say about this one, but bottom line is -- I liked it, and you should read it.

✽Clean Sweep, by Ilona Andrews.  I read a little bit of this when it was published as a serial for free, and adored the world premise. Really loved it, and the full book!  Great story, but it felt like the beginning of something that might not get finished.  I'm getting spoiled about long-running series, I guess.

✽Crazy, Stupid Sex by Maisey Yates. How can you resist a title like that?  Another winning nerd-girl heroine.

✽Fury of Desire, by Coreene Callahan.  Book 4 in the Dragonfury series, and not bad on the adventure and series arc fronts.  I found the hero's character resolution to be a little jarring and not quite on target though.

 ✽Kinked, by Thea Harrison.  Good grief, I really, really loved this one. This is the story that I wanted for J.R. Ward's Vishous.  It's the story of two extreme entities, who have waited a long time to meet their matches.  When they do, sparks fly, and nobody has to give up who they are.

Outlander Watch... Och. I canna wait for Jamie and Claire onscreen.


Delightful photo via Outlander Life's Twitter feed:

 

Not What You're Expecting

So, I've had JR Ward's latest in my hot little hands for 24 hours now, so naturally you're expecting a review of... Ilona Andrews?

Yeah, I wasn't expecting that either. I needed something to read yesterday morning and lunch, before my scheduled stop at Borders, so I picked up On the Edge, fully expecting to have to take a hiatus while I gobbled down Covet.

But when it came right down to the moment, sitting on the sofa with a nice hot adult beverage, rain pattering on the roof, the children in bed and offering only token resistance... I had to choose. And I just couldn't put it down.

Not even knowing that I'd be back to it in a day or two. Not even for JR Ward, an author who has ratcheted up my obsession-o-meter to higher levels than I thought possible.

I had to know what happened to Rose and Declan. The angel (?) would have to wait.

The Short Answer:
Totally loved it, go buy and read it. Caution: you might want to choose a day when getting up the next morning is optional, cuz there's a good chance you're going to want to read it straight through.

The Hook
Andrews -- actually, the author is a team, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to refer to them by their pen name-- does a fan-freakin'-tastic job of setting up the world. Within 3 pages, we have a zombie, a child shape-shifter, and an exasperated heroine who keeps the zombie in line with a crossbow and chains. There's a comical adventure feel to the opening scene, culminating in a wisecrack about guns, trucks, and Walmart -- but it's grounded by the very unfunny poverty the family lives in.

In THREE PAGES.

And it doesn't let up from there. The parallel worlds premise is completely engaging and gives the authors enough latitude for lots of fantasy elements-- this story is very much a fairy tale, with a knight, a Cinderella heroine, a juuuuuuuuuust barely defeatable villain of unquestionable evil; assistance from unexpected corners, and a vibrant cast of secondary characters. Plus guns, trucks, and Walmart. And one of those comic book guys.

The light-hearted style, entertaining wisecracking and sparkling romantic tension are consistently balanced by the nastiness of the foe and the gritty circumstances of Rose's backstory, which I think is what made it so readable for me.

Here's an example of what I mean. As the set up, you just need to know that Declan is literally from a whole different world, where he is a very wealthy nobleman in a society that seems roughly medieval (though with better hygiene through the miracle of modern magic). And Rose has good reason to be suspicious of him and his social class. Oh, and "The Broken" is the characters' term for regular old earth, where we Muggles live.

Rose tried the pancakes. They were predictably cold, but still delicious, and she was ravenous. "God, these are good."

"Slowly."

Rose raised her gaze from her plate.

He sat very straight at the table, cutting the pancake with surgical precision.

"Eat slowly," the blueblood said. "Don't cut your food with the fork. Cut it with the knife, and make the pieces small enough so you can answer a question without having to swallow first."

*Why me?* "Right. Any other tips?"

The sarcasm whistled right over his head. "Yes. Look at me and not at your plate. If you have to look at your plate, glance at it occasionally."

Rose put down her fork. "Lord Submarine..."

"Camarine."

"Whatever."

"You can call me Declan." He said as if granting her knighthood. The nerve.

"Declan, then. How did you spend your day?"

He frowned.

"It's a simple question: How did you spend your day? What did you do prior to the fight and pancake making?"

"I rested from my journey," he said with a sudden regal air.

"You took a nap."

"Possibly."

"I spent my day scrubbing, vacuuming, and dusting in the Broken. I got there at seven-thirty in the morning and left at six. My back hurts, I can still smell bleach on my fingers, and my feet feel as flat as these pancakes. Tomorrow, I have to go back to work, and I want to eat my food in peace and quiet. I have good table manners. They may not be good enough for you, but they are definitely good enough for the Edge, and they are the height of social graces for this house. So please keep your critique to yourself."

Can I get a YOU GO!! ? The punch line there is awesomeness itself, but that scene tells you almost everything you need to know about the conflict between the two of them. It also covers the stylistic balance of funny with a little gut-wrenching darkness thrown in.

Yum, Alpha
Andrews writes an alpha hero like nobody's business. Awhile back I did a little nosing around on the topic of alpha behavior. One of them, can't remember which, made a point that alphas "take up space." They expect other people to accommodate *them,* and Andrews makes this particular point in a number of ways-- here's one example:

He held himself like a man who never rode in a crowded bus. His shoulders were too wide, his posture too forceful, and if he were to step into one of the busy malls of the Broken, people would probably trip over themselves to give him his space.

Yeah. Very alpha.

The Romance
On The Edge is definitely more of a romance than the Kate Daniels books, and I expect additional books in the series to be about different characters, not ongoing adventures for Rose and Declan. There's an obvious candidate for the next hero coughcoughWilliamcough but after that who knows. (I'm totally assuming here, as I don't particularly follow Ilona Andrews news). I liked the characters very much and thought the romance resolved well. If I had to nitpick, I'd say the "OMG, I'm in love!" realization seemed a little out of the blue to me on both sides. But not a major problem.

In no way does this story resemble an Old Skool romance, with its ultra-hip mashup of style and genres and the heroine who nearly electrocutes her would-be rapist/seducer... and yet if one of the main qualifiers of Old Skoolery is a coming-of-age transformation of the heroine, we do see that here. Rose's powers make her a victim and a target; her status in the Edge--literally, between worlds-- is dictated by the uncanny strength of her magic. Not coincidentally, the pivotal magical incident takes place at a graduation ceremony-- from child to adult-- and places her in a specific danger that is tightly knotted with her sexuality.

The role that her power plays in the romantic relationship is not what it first appears. I love that her hero teaches her more about how to use it, and facilitates her transformation into a person who can fully realize that power. And because it's a romance and not some other kind of story, the reflected message in the romance is that Rose realizes her full feminine power too.


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As always, if you have reviewed this book on your blog, feel free to leave a link in comments!