Review - Dead Heat

Dead Heat
by Patricia Briggs

(P.S. I am going to try adding covers again and see if I can keep them without breaking them now)

Patricia Briggs is one of my auto buy authors. I adore her Mercyverse, which includes the Alpha & Omega series. Some people suggest that you don't really need to read the Mercy Thompson series in order to understand or read the Alpha & Omega series, but I am going to have to politely disagree. Events that happen in each series influence and inform the events of the other series. This is the 4th story in the Alpha & omega series, and there are 8 stories in the Mercy Thompson series. In my opinion, you need all those stories, and you need to read them in order. But, at the least you will need to read the preceding Alpha & omega books before reading this one.

Up until this point, I would have said that the Mercy Thompson series was the Urban Fantasy branch, and the Alpha & Omega series was the Paranormal Romance branch. Dead Heat tends to move away from a stricter paranormal romance sensibility and more into an urban fantasy one, and despite my die hard romance reader soul, I was not only OK with that, I was thrilled. Charles and Anna are settled, their relationship is strong, yes there is and will be friction to their relationship because of how their pasts have shaped them, it would be impossible to be otherwise. But their relationship is strong. And that was the problem I had with Fair Game, it seemed to be trying so hard to be relationship focused and romance novel centric, that in places if made them caricatures of themselves. Not to say I didn't like Fair Game, because I did, but there were some uncomfortable moments for me, and not because of story elements, but because the character's actions didn't always seem to fit them. Dead Heat wasn't like that at all. This story was positively joyous despite the threads of violence and endangerment of children. We got to see more of how Charles and Anna are as part of a larger world, one that isn't all misery, but spans the scope of human (and werewolf) emotion and experience. Joy, love, anger, regret, fear, compassion. Yes, they focus on each other and continue and learn each other, as they should, but their relationship isn't the only focus of their lives and their actions. And that for me is what makes it possible for a series and a couple to continue to progress. We also saw the return of Special Agent Leslie Fisher, which I appreciated for one thing because I simply like her, and for another, because just as we are seeing Charles' relationships outside of Anna, I'd like to see Anna develop relationships outside of Charles.

Some threads that were picked up are: Anna's wish for children and Charles' fears, the effects of almost-immortality matched against the reality of loved ones who die, how werewolves are changed and the politics involved in that, the Fae war, and of course, good vs. evil because it wouldn't be Patricia Briggs if we didn't have that. This wasn't the sexiest or most sensual book, and we didn't get to see as much of Anna's wolf as I would have liked (yes we saw her in werewolf form, but not really her wolf), but it kept me frantically flipping pages and completely absorbed for the entire book. It doesn't resolve everything, which is good because that would cause the book and the series to feel static, but nothing pressing was left out.

5 stars

Review - Burn for Me

Burn for Me
by Ilona Andrews

Ilona Andrews, the husband and wife writing team of the Kate Daniels Series and The Edge Series, and just all around awesome couple who seriously interact with their fans on their blog and who do free serial writing projects (really check out their blog) have started a new series, Hidden Legacy.

The Hidden Legacy series is in a divergent world where in 1863 we discover a serum that unlocks untapped magic potential. Shenanigans ensue and the world decides this is much too dangerous to be let loose. Of course, there are all the people who have already had the serum, and these traits are passed down genetically to their offspring, so magic, and thus power, prestige, and money are concentrated into the hands of these families, known as Houses.

Nevada Baylor, so far as the world is concerned, is magically a null. She owns an investigation service that is mortgaged to a powerful House, and has a host of responsibilities from her family and the business. When a deranged pyrotechnic starts a series of crimes, and his family wants him peaceably captured, Nevada is conscripted, because her chief qualification is she's expendable. If only they knew she is an extremely powerful human lie detector, it would be so much worse.

Connor Rogan, also known as Mad Rogan, is the most powerful telekinetic known. He's a former soldier and something of a sociopath. But when his cousin who he hasn't contacted in a decade comes to him for help in getting her son who has been pulled into the plot into custody rather than dead, he decides to become involved.

Naturally this sets Nevada and Mad Rogan onto a collision course. I have to say, I did not like the way they met. Mad Rogan was in my opinion reprehensible, and his future behavior didn't endear me to him as we went along. I am typically cool with morally ambivalent and even to an extent, sociopathic ones, but Rogan really kind of irked me. And it didn't help that the POV was completely from Nevada's side, nor that Nevada started out displaying TSTL heroine characteristics with an overwhelmingly unsuitable hero and in the most inappropriate moments.  But, as the story progressed and they were in dangerous situation after dangerous situation where Rogan kind of shined, and where Nevada stuck to her guns about not going after what she wanted when it wasn't good for her, well I started to see it better. Then Nevada gave us a bit of insight to how Rogan looked to someone with such an unusual magical ability.

"Mad Rogan, unlike other people, rarely lied. I didn't know if it was because I would call him on it or if it was simply his way. When he said he would kill you, he meant it. He didn't make threats or promises, he stated facts, and when he wanted something, he'd do whatever he had to do to get it"

That, to me, really seemed to make it make sense. I mean, how seductive would it be to a human lie detector to be around someone who didn't lie to her?

When we hit the last chapter and I saw how much stronger Nevada was than she thought (it seriously closed the power differential between her and Rogan), and how she kept up her distance for the most part, despite her attraction and him pushing, I was ready to give it 3.5 stars or so and be cautiously optimistic about the rest of the series. Then, OH MY EFFING GOD, we got to the epilogue. There was a hellacious twist that I never saw coming and we finally got into Rogan's head. It immediately bumped up to 4.5 stars for me and I am extremely excited about the next book in the series. I can't wait to see how Rogan unfolds. Do I forgive him right now? Nope, but he's got all kinds of room for growth and interesting stuff.

Review - Archangel's Shadows

Archangel's Shadows
by Nalini Singh

This is book 7 in the Guild Hunter series. If you haven't already been hooked into this series, it's a delightful blend of paranormal romance and urban fantasy. The world is controlled by Angels and Archangels who are the progenitors of vampires. These are strictly secular angels with evolutionary rather than religious origins. And both the vampires and the angels are extremely other, not just humans with accouterments strapped to them, which I adore. What's the point of having paranormal characters if you can't tell them from mortal ones? Vampires are naturally quite dangerous creatures and so a human organization, the Guild Hunters, have set themselves up as a sort of police organization. They must work with the Angels and Archangels, as they are the powers, but the Guild is largely an independent organization. The series primarily revolves around the Archangel Raphael and Guild Hunter Elena Deveraux; however, it sidles off to explore the lives and relationships of the more integral secondary characters. In that way it is more like Eileen Wilks' World of Lupi than her Psi-Changeling series (which is another excellent series if you haven't yet been sucked in).

This is one of those series that makes me wish for a time machine so I could sit in a library and devour ALL THE BOOKS! I can't savor these on the first read; I gulp them down and save the savoring for the re-reads. And I can guarantee you that I will be re-reading any of her books. So, that being said, this book is absolutely not the place to start with this series. The mythology and the relationship backgrounds are entirely too intricate to start in the middle. Go ahead, start at the beginning, I'll wait right here :)



So, this is nominally Janvier and Ashwini's book. We already had a peak into their relationship dynamic through other books and most particularly in the novella Angel's Pawn. Ash has been notoriously reluctant to become involved with Janvier and this book gives us a bombshell about exactly why. I don't want to spoil it, but it was excellent. This is not one of those little nothing turned into BIG MISUNDERSTANDING situations that I find so exasperating. It was a serious issue, albeit one which as this is a romance we knew would be resolved.

There was a bit of a mystery and investigation involved, but it really served more as a backdrop to the politics and world building, and to giving a platform to all the main characters. It was a good plot line, but honestly, I cared much more about the characters than the suspense part this time. We got to get into plenty of our favorite characters heads, learned more about Legion, and....Naasir absolutely stole the show and has completely supplanted my wish for Ilium to be next. Ilium just isn't ready, but Naasir is, and I am oh so ready for Naasir. I can't believe I hadn't previously seen the possibilities of a tiger-like vampire. That isn't to say Janvier and Ash were sidelined, they were front and center and much of the story is devoted to them, but they are so closely tied to the families they have made that it is impossible to separate them out.

5 absolutely breathtaking stars, and if it weren't for the fact Ilona Andrews' Burn for Me is up in my que next, I'd be re-reading it tonight.