Sunday Soup - May Day

In The Soup This Week... Keri Arthur, Chanel Cleeton, Amanda Bouchet, Charlotte Stein

Soup Dish:  on my mind/good links

✽Fabio has certainly taken more than a fair share of ridicule--even my 6'2" husband, who once sported some flowing locks of his own, does a killer "I can't believe it's not butter" impersonation. But I gotta say, Fabio certainly seem to take it with good grace. His latest appearance at the new romance-only bookstore, The Ripped Bodice, made some definite ripples on Twitter this week.

✽Controversy broke out this week over Amy Lane's m/m Selfie, where a person of color is referred to as a "chocolate love monkey."  Look here for a Storify capture, courtesy of Julio, and Riptide's subsequent response. It's been a passionate discussion. I'm sorry these kinds of things are still happening, but in some sense, the fact that the conversation is happening, I think is good and hopeful. It's the sunshine as disinfectant, to paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (who, by the way, seems to have been a fascinating person. If you were looking for a random internet byway to spend some time in, here you go.)

✽ If you're looking for even more reading, you can always try Violet Blue's weekly roundup of sex-news links. The site is NSFW, but the articles are not aimed at titillation. 

What I'm reading
I'm totally on a roll this week. Great stuff from #RT16, and still can't stop the one-click finger...

✽Tried and true, Keri Arthur never fails me. City of Light was awesome and I tore through in a single day (and one late night. I love that her heroines are tough but vulnerable, brave in the face of terrifying enemies, and have this unapologetic sexuality that remains orthogonal to morality.

✽Charlotte Stein's Never Sweeter was an absolute killer. Emotionally wracking. Stein takes situations that we can relate to, but then pushes them and pushes them and then shoves them over a cliff. This story is about a woman who'd been bullied in high school far beyond what most of us ever experience- trying not to spoiler anything, but the phrase "attempted murder" happens. She is terrorized by this person for years. He follows her to college, out of a real desire to make amends. I honestly found the idea that the heroine could have any spark of sexual feeling for him to be pretty dubious, but if you suspend that disbelief, it's it's an intense, romantic, emotional ride.

✽So then I went back to Fly With Me, by Chanel Cleeton, which was all light and sassy and sexy in the beginning but then had me torn up and weepy at the 80% mark or so. I've read a fair number of books featuring former military characters, but in reading this one, I realized that I haven't read too many that involve currently-active members. I didn't see it coming and it really hit me with some patriotic feels along with the romance.

✽My last read was another huge winner. It doesn't release until August but I'll give you just a little tease: fantasy/PNR, worldbuilding loosely based on the Greek mythological pantheon, warrior hero reminiscent of Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo and a heroine whose secrets include turning invisible and breathing fire, and those are just the little ones. Watch for a full review of A Promise of Fire, by Amanda Bouchet, later this summer. But if you wanted to pre-order now, I'm saying that wouldn't be a mistake.

2016 Book Goals
So three of my four reads above were physical books, but I got them all at RT, so I'm not sure they count as stash, or at least, they definitely weren't part of the stash as of January 1. Still... it's a little progress? sort of?

No progress at all on the non-fiction. I do have a couple titles on hand, maybe I'll dig into one of them this week.  I've been trying to decide on my next read!

That's it for this week. Happy reading!

Sunday Soup - July 13

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

Soup Dish:  on my mind this week...
✽A lot of interesting links about the ongoing Hachette vs. Amazon battle and where the author and reader interests lie. There is a ton of rhetoric out there about who is the bigger monster, and I cannot claim to understand all the nuances.  But the most compelling article I've read lately on the topic is this one from Joe Konrath. In particular, the information he exposes around one reason that Hachette *may* be digging in on terms is the issue of retail discounting:

If you want to understand what a party is doing in a negotiation, a good place to start is with their public statements. In this case, we know exactly what Hachette was planning to do in this negotiation because they published their strategy. In a letter to the federal court in the ebook antitrust case, believe it or not. When the proposed final judgment for Apple was announced, it included a provision that prohibited Apple from entering into agreements that would limit its ability to offer retail discounts.

The Big 5 are saying that as soon as the two year "cooling off" period is over, they want to get rid of retail discounting. Literally their only objection to the Apple settlement is that it will leave one ebook retailer who must maintain the ability to discount. The Big 5 have been waiting for two years for a chance to get rid of retail discounting. And take special note of that word "unilaterally". That means that the Big 5 each have to negotiate independently with their retailers.

I don't know about you guys, but I really like being able to bargain shop occasionally for e-books.  I do pay full price on release day for some authors that I love, but I also am more likely to try an unknown author for 99 cents than I am for $7.99.

✽I am not lovin' Bloglovin. I've followed links to several blog posts lately that were somehow(?) syndicated with this app, and it pops up a large header that consumes about 20% of my available vertical reading space.  Presumably this would go away if only I would sign in to a service I know nothing about and cannot find out about unless I log in. I'm feeling cranky about the sheer number of services/apps I need to log into lately and I am not automatically creating accounts for everything.  So if you are using this service, be aware that it is an obstacle for cranky people like myself.

✽And while I'm at it, those of you who use jumps in your articles are putting up another barrier for me.  I read most of my blogs in a feedreader (Feedly), and I only click through maybe 5% of the articles that I get a teaser for.  I know you have your reasons for doing that -- ad revenue and clicks are one -- but that is a big reason I love the feedreader. I get all those annoying flashy-blinky-scrolling ads filtered. Just so you know.


What I'm reading

✽I have been loving the Kit Rocha series so much, I don't know why it didn't occur to me until recently to check out the books by the same team under their other nom de plume, Moira Rogers. I picked up Crux early last week and positively devoured it. I'm pacing myself on new purchases, considering the staggering size of my TBR pile, but that series just jumped high up on the list. Absolutely loved it.  

✽This review at Herding Cats and Burning Soup (great name!) caught my eye, and I've added The Bottom Line to my "to be acquired" list. I'm always on the lookout for a good contemp author to try. (disclosure: link goes to the original blogger's affiliate link, seems only fair.)

✽I bent my "no review copies" policy for Memory Zero by Keri Arthur. This is book one of a new series and I totally loved it. It does bear a strong resemblance to the Riley Jenson series in pacing and pattern, which in my mind is all to the good. The heroine is a tough police detective with latent paranormal abilities, and after attending a couple of sessions at RT14 with Diana Rowland, whose bio includes similar police work and also writes UF, and I couldn't help kind of picturing her as the heroine, Sam Ryan. It is available for pre-order, and if you liked Riley, you'll be a fan of this series as well.

✽I was on such a good roll with paranormals that I decided to pick up a physical book that had been gathering dust on my shelf: The Last Mermaid from Shana Abe. I love Abe's writing soooo much. It's been a bit slower read, partly I think I just read physical books more slowly than e-books, and partly because the language is worth lingering over.

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

With the premiere of the TV show less than a month away, the buzz is really heating up. First up, the scoop about when and where from Entertainment Weekly. Next, a very nice photo gallery from Yahoo TV (although I was a little disappointed in the lack of really new images). Finally, an interview with Starz' CEO, who is hardly impartial, but it's nice to see that kind of excitement.

Destiny Kills, by Keri Arthur - Review

Jaded
You know you've been reading too much paranormal fiction when you crack open a book that starts with a naked, blood-splattered amnesiac heroine waking up next to a dead body and you think, "oh this old thing again??"

Marjorie Liu's Wild Road comes to mind, but I'm sure there have been others.  Hasn't there?  Help me out here.

Keri Arthur's new-ish series, Myth and Magic, is not too bad but not as good as I might have hoped, given how in love I have been with the Riley Jenson series --in fact, I mistakenly bought this book last summer thinking it was part of the Jenson series.

Sharp characters and imaginative world-building save this story from a mediocre plotline of paranormals on the run from evil scientists performing unspeakable experiments.  The hero is a pretty classic Bad Boy, with a touch of the Charmer (honestly, I think there's a lot of overlap in the eight classic archetypes).  Trae as a hero hits all the right notes for me -- he's strong, smart, ingenious, funny, ruthless with the bad guys and tender with the heroine.  He's not a masculine Mary Sue -- he's got his own agenda and he doesn't always play fair, but Destiny doesn't let him get away with it.  Two thumbs up for Trae.

Destiny is harder to peg.  She's more vulnerable than I generally like in a heroine, but that's consistent with the story set up -- she's spent the last third of her life in captivity, washing up on shore with no clothes, no money, and no ID.  She's a paradoxical mix of innocence and cynicism, also consistent. This book came out near the end of the Jenson series and I felt like Destiny's voice wasn't as separate from Riley's as it could have been, but Destiny is younger and a bit softer.  Her most interesting qualities, I think, are her supernatural abilities.  As a sea dragon, she has certain powers over bodies of water -- now, I've seen this trope before-- for example, with Alyssa Day's Warriors of Atlantis-- but Arthur gives it a unique and intriguing spin.

I particularly liked the sense of antiquity around Arthur's dragon mythology -- there's a bit of mysticism and ritual that gives it a nice distinction from the gritty, no-frills Jenson series.   The next book is due out in April and follows Trae's sister, so it's looking more like a paranormal romance series than the one-heroine UF style Arthur brought us with Riley Jenson and, later next year, Risa Jones whom we met as a child in Riley's series.

As I alluded to, I was a little disappointed with the tired plotline -- it's a rehash for PNR in general, and Arthur herself has already done it-- and the two-dimensional badness of the villains.  Ambiguous evil is so much more interesting.  And this is a nitpick, but I wish the author had come up with some menacing corporate sort of name for the research group -- calling them "the scientists" throughout the book was a bit off-putting and anti-intellectual to me, since I prefer to think of scientists in general as good guys.

Bottom line, it looks like a promising series with a solid, if not outta-the-park debut.  I'll be picking up the book in April for sure.

Dear Keri Arthur:

A Fan Letter
I seriously cannot wait for Moon Sworn tomorrow. You are officially my current favorite author-- I've torn through all the Riley Jenson books up until this point, haunting the bookstores for back issues, losing sleep, dreaming of strange beings and super powers, missing bus stops*, and accidentally buying duplicate copies of titles.

You've got me all shook up, Ms. Arthur, and it's rare that an author steps outside the bounds of my reading time to occupy my thoughts during random "real life" moments. Riley has the perfect character balance between "special, outrageous, extraordinary" and the everywoman, relate-able quality. Yes, I know that's contradictory. That's why it's so hard to do, and so rare to find.

I'm also a sucker for well-done folklore and mythology. Of course, by "well-done" I mean, "done in a way that I particularly-- and completely subjectively-- really like." I like the way you combine legends that I know a bit about with the more obscure ones-- you've got everything from ghosts and vampires, to judeo-christian-esque demons and that cat thing, whattaya call it, bakeneko . Not to mention a lovely, series-wide sub-theme about power and how it plays out in different times, different populations, and with different paranormal twists. It's done with both familiarity and respect to tradition as well as ingenious originality. I know, contradictory again.

And the thing is, I'm first and foremost a romance fan. And these aren't really romances. But the series-long romantic arc is so enjoyable. I love the way you separate sex and love for your characters -- they are related of course, but they're NOT the same, and I love that your characters don't fall prey to the Magic Hoo-Hoo/Curse of the Bad Wang** syndrome. I haven't read Moon Sworn yet (not on the lucky review copy list) but I can say that I was STUNNED by the series romance plot turn in Bound by Shadows and cannot wait to see how you resolve Riley's conundrum. Treated as a whole-- assuming that Moon Sworn delivers (and word is, it does) -- the series is a wonderful romance.

Thanks much to Kassa for the idea of the awesome Author Fan Letter Crawl. I chose Keri Arthur for two reasons -- one, Moon Sworn is my MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK in more than a year; and two, I can't really write a review, because I really do try for at least a little objectivity in my reviews... and I can't be objective when I'm MADLY IN LOVE with an author.

So in conclusion,

Keri Arthur, I am MADLY IN LOVE with you and-- thank you so much for providing so many hours of superior entertainment. Your work is fabulous and amazing and sets a bar to which other UF writers should aspire.

Love,

Nicola O.


___
*not literally true -- but close; very close.
**The Smart Bitches develop this concept more in their book, but essentially it's the idea that the heroine is physiologically incapable of having really good sex unless it's with the Hero of the story, ergo, any sex that the heroine may have had prior to meeting said Hero must suffer from Bad Wang.


Please visit Althea tomorrow for the next letter in the crawl. If you missed Stacy's yesterday, head on over to her tribute to Shiloh Walker. And please stop by Kassa's place to get the complete list of participants and to thank her for having such a great idea.

Keri Arthur Update

Holy Twisted Endings, Batman!

At the time I wrote the Thursday Thirteen below, I had just started the 8th and most current Riley Jenson book, Bound to Shadows.

So now that I've finished it, I just needed to update with a #14: WOW! I *so* did not see that twist coming. The emotional climax to this story is an amazing set up for the series ending, Moon Sworn, releasing on May 25th.

Moon Sworn just became my most-anticipated book of 2010. I cannot wait. And I must congratulate myself on timing my read of this series so that I don't have to perch on these pins and needles for too too long. A month is juuuuuuust long enough to enjoy some delicious anticipation.




Will I be at Borders' door on May 25th? Oh yes I will. Bet on it.

Thursday Thirteen, Edition 18 - Riley Jenson

I really loved Jackie's February mini-challenge, and I really wanted to do it again this month. So I started with Keri Arthur, because I've been meaning to check her out, ever since I enjoyed her short story in the Hotter Than Hell anthology (wow, I can't believe it's been more than a year. The TBR pile is out of control, people).

The April Challenge involves a smackdown between two group author blogs: Fangs, Fur and Fey versus Deadline Dames. (There are prizes -- you should check it out!).

However, one thing that's getting in the way of me trying several of the authors on Jackie's April list is... Keri Arthur. OMG, I am SOOOO addicted to her Riley Jenson series.

Since it happened to work out this way, I thought I'd try a T-13 on the series so far. Usually I like to review a single book or a whole series, and believe me, I *will* finish this series. But I have a deadline so I figured I should just park the butt in the seat and get it done with what I've got so far. Here we go:

13 Random Thoughts about Riley Jenson
(Riley is the character, Arthur is the author)

1. Other reviewers have used the word "unabashed" a lot when talking about Riley's werewolf sexuality, and for good reason. This element of Arthur's world is incredibly well-done -- Riley's physiological need for sex and the werewolf cultural acceptance of "casual" sex and multiple partners creates inherent conflict with her significant others, and elevates the erotic scenes from merely titillating to critical plot- and character- drivers.
   
   
2. Riley is half werewolf and half vampire, with most of the best parts of both and few of the weaknesses, which is very cool.


3. Yet there is still a good balance with her physical limitations -- she's strong, even supernaturally strong, but her foes are supernatural too, and it usually seems like a pretty fair fight.


4. I love the way Arthur mines world folklore to bring nightmare characters and boogeymen to life. She puts a modern spin on the legends while respecting longstanding traditions, and the result is a suspension system for your disbelief that Mercedes-Benz would envy.


5. Riley wears fabulous shoes -- now, I am not a designer shoe kind of girl, but it's fun to read about her specially-made stilettos with wooden heels -- the better to impale the bad vampires with.


6. The tech: Arthur's world is slightly futuristic, maybe 20-50 years down the road. The "tech" is mostly just extensions of current technology, done in a believable way that doesn't get in the way of the story. (I am especially fond of the earlobe comm-link).


7. Salliane, a/k/a Sal The Cow. She's a secondary character who shows up around book 4 and I love the banter between the two women. It sounds too hateful to excerpt but when you're reading it, you can hear the teasing underneath, and through several books you can see the friendship grow. I also like how impossibly efficient Sal is.
   


8. Series OCD rating: 11 on a scale of 1-10. I've been so anxious to acquire the series that I accidentally bought Bound to Shadows twice. I finished #4 sooner than I planned (at, uh, about 1:00 am) so when I found myself at a happy hour right next to Barnes and Noble, I strolled over and bought #5 and 6 both, just to be sure.
   


9. I like how -- most of the time-- Arthur's supernatural races are not inherently good or evil, but a little of both, just like the human race. Their individual characteristics may make them more prone to some vices or virtues, but there isn't a base assumption about the whole race.


10. Arthur's bad guys strike a good balance between scary/bad/evil/powerful, and defeatable. This is a tough thing for paranormal authors to accomplish, and Arthur does it well, book after book.


11. Inclusivity: Both race and sexual preferences have a role in the series. Most of the characters in the series are "color-blind." Beauty and attraction come in a wide variety of packaging, and Arthur portrays them effortlessly. A major secondary character is gay, and he and his partner are an integral part of Riley's professional team. As the m/m relationship develops over the several books, the difficulties they encounter mirror Riley's insecurities in a subtle but meaningful way.


12. The men in this series are TO DIE FOR. I mean seriously: a horse shifter. (Think about it. Uh huh.) Alpha wolves. Suave vampires (also scary ones, but the good ones are yumm).


13. I didn't intend to write a total rave - I had a couple of minor nitpicks - but I don't think I'm going to bother with them. As I compile my thoughts here, I'm coming to a surprising conclusion: I cannot think of a series that I have enjoyed more than this one. It's top 3 for sure, along with Meljean Brook's Guardians and Nalini Singh's Psy-Changelings. (The BDB... well, I have an irrational love for the first 4 books but as a series it's uneven at best.)
    

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