Flight into Fantasy

… would be this thread.

Title: The Warrior’s Gift
Author: Bonnie Dee

Summary: In Katya’s world, villagers sacrifice their daughters as sex slaves for a sect of
warriors who keep their lands safe from invasion. When Katya herself is chosen as
a “bride”, although she’s always questioned the arrangement, she submits for the
sake of her family. She has no idea what to expect from the warriors, and not much
more idea when it comes to sex.
Blessedly, her Warrior, Turan, turns out to be a sweet, gentle giant of a man, despite
being raised in ignorance of anything but fighting and killing. He knows as little
about sex as Katya herself, but his primal passions burn hot.
Together they learn the pleasures of the flesh…and incite a revolution that changes
their world forever.

The Good: There’s a lot to recommend it about this ebook. Dee does a wonderful job with introducing our characters and the society in which they live. Katya is the rare character in romancelandia, a feisty female character who is, you know, endearingly feisty and not too stupid to live. And, oh, Turan. I have a huge soft spot for the gentle giant archetypes, and Turan is a refreshingly nice guy with a wonderfully naive view of the world. And also, I do love it when we get a virgin hero in one of these books.

The Bad: The premise requires a bit of suspension of disbelief. I had a hard time accepting the fact that everyone lived under the strict control of the Guardians, who are basically the ones who train the warriors. Apparently, nobody’s thought to revolt before Katya showed up, which I found a little strange. I also thought the ending wrapped things up a little too neatly and simplistically, which is too bad because the setting could have been a lot of fun if explored in greater depth.

My verdict: I do recommend this book. It’s a quick read, with a couple of likeable characters. If it weren’t for the things about the story’s actual premise, it’d be an A book for sure. As it is, I’m still giving it a B.
ETA: I have no idea why my HTML foo sucks.

Title: The Lost King of Oz
Author: Ruth Plumly Thompson
Summary: This story tells the tale of the King of Oz, who was deposed when the Wizard of Oz took over as ruler, and of the witch Mombi, who we first meet in The Land of Oz.

The Good: This is an entertaining story, full of rollicking adventure. It’s a quick, fun read and I enjoyed it a lot. Especially the sections with Scraps the Patchwork Girl in them. In this book, Scraps definitely plays the part of the queen’s fool, and does it well.

The Bad: Well, this is definitely Oz fanfic, even if it was authorized by the original author. I don’t remember if I’ve read one of the books Thompson wrote before. If I have, it would have been when I was a kid and wasn’t distracted by stylistic differences. It’s hard to pinpoint what didn’t work for me except to say that I never felt condescended to when I read Baum’s books, and Thompson definitely condescends a bit to her audience.

Grade: Since this was definitely an entertaining read, despite my problems with it (which amount to “this isn’t L. Frank Baum”) I’m going to give it a B.

Title: Miles, Mystery and Mayhem
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Summary: This is an omnibus collection featuring two novels, Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos as well as the novella “Labyrinth”>

At this moment in my life, I am a complete, total and irredeemable Lois McMaster Bujold fangirl. The woman could write the phone book and I would probably read it as long as it had a listing for Miles Vorkosigan in it somewhere.

The first novel, Cetaganda describes a diplomatic mission. The Empress of Cetaganda has died, and Miles and his cousin Ivan attend the funeral. As usual, nothing goes as planned, and soon Miles is embroiled up to his eyebrowws in Cetagandan intrigue.

To be honest, I thought this was the weakest story in the collection. I’m not sure what didn’t work for me, but, unlike with the other two offerings, I actually did manage to leave the book voluntarily for as long as hours at a time. Maybe it’s just that so far I prefer Miles and his adventures with the Dendarii Mercinaries.

I really expected not to like Ethan of Athos because, well, there isn’t any Miles anywhere except offstage. Ethan is from, as you might surmise, the planet Athos, which is a society free of women. They use uterine replicators in order to bring children into the world, but their original materials aren’t producing viable offspring. When the shipment of ovary samples Athos has purchased arrives and turns out to be completely fake, Ethan goes to Klein station himself to sort out the matter, and meets Ellie Quinn, whom we first met back in Warrior’s Apprentice .

I loved Ethan as a character. Fish out of water stories are my favorites, and I loved watching Ethan struggle to deal with life outside Athos. He is especially unsure what to make of Ellie Quinn, who is the first woman he’s ever met.

I was very satisfied with the way the story turns out. And since I warnned you there’d be spoilers, here they are. Ethan and Ellie do not end up together, a fact which startled me, even though I know Bujold doesn’t generally take the easy way out for her characters. In fact, there’s no chemistry between them at all, which I wasn’t expecting. And that worked for me. I mean, Ethan comes from an all-male society. Of course he wouldn’t naturally be inclined to (as Atalanta Pendrag said on IRC) embrace the poon. I just wish I were aware of characters from female separatist societies in books I’ve read who fail to embrace the cock, too.

“Labyrinth”, the last piece in the collection, has Miles and Bell Thorn, who is a Betan hermaphrodite and one of the Dendarii captains, taking a trip to Jackson’s Hole. Their fairly simple mission, of course, gets complicated, and Miles ends up[ rescuing Taura, a genetic experimental supersoldier, from one of the major syndicates on Jackson’s Hole.

Taura, in truth, totally made this story. But then, anyone who knows my taste in characters would fail to be surprised. I love big, awkward, amazon women. I loved Taura’s vulnerability, and I loved that she could be competent when she needed to be. I understand that there is more Taura goodness in future Miles stories, and if I didn’t already love them to the point of obsession, this would be a definite reason to keep reading.

My verdict: Bujold at her worst pwns some writers at their best. A for this one!

Title: Dark Prince
Author: Christine Feehan
What follows is a rant about this book in which a year’s worth of frustration with my inability to finish this stupid book gets vented. There may be spoilers, and there is definitely snark.

Summary from her official website: He came to her in the night, a predator — strength and power chiseled his features.
The seduction was deep and elemental; he affected her soul. His need. His darkness.
His terrible haunting loneliness. Her senses aroused, she craved the dangerous force
of his body. Burned for him. And he had only touched her with his mind.
She came to him at dawn, his bleakest hour. As the beast raged inside him, threatening
to consume him, he vented his centuries-old despair in an anguished cry that filled
the waning night. And she answered, a ray of light, piercing his darkness. A beautiful
angel. Her compassion, courage, and innocence awakened in him an exquisite longing
and tenderness. He knew he must possess her, for only she could tame his savage side
and lift the dark shadow from his soul. Apart they were desolate, bereft. Intertwined
physically and spiritually, they could heal one another and experience an eternity
of nights filled with love.

And since that summary sucked, even if it does give you a sense of Feehan’s style, let’s go with my own version, shall we?

Mikhail Dubrinsky is a bad-ass Carpathian. A Carpathian is basically a lot like a stereotypical vampire, except that in this universe, actual vampires are soulless and savage and completely corrupt. Carpathians, it turns out, live huge, long lives and gradually lose all but their violent emotions. Once this happens, Carpathians have three choices: (1) endure the lack of emotions for as long as possible, (2) find their lifemate, and (3) set up a one-way date with the sun.

Mikhail, who is the biggest, baddest Carpathian evah, until the next book, needless to say, has not known love, or any other emotion at all, in centuries. Apparently, he has not once in all this time considered having a little tension-relieving gay sex with his fellow Carpathians. If he had, I would have hated this book less. As it is, he’s considering saying goodbye to the cruel world and watching the sunrise, when suddenly, he makes mental contact with Raven Whitney, and, inexplicably, he can feel emotions, see colors, and resist the urge to have haut gay sex with his right-hand man, Gregory. Yes, kids, raven is Mikhail’s lifemate.

The rest of what follows is distinctly hard to summarize, because, man, this plot is a mess. Basically, Raven and Mikhail have sex, someone threatens Raven, who keeps putting herself in danger, because Raven is not the brightest crayon in the box, Mikhail kills them, he and Raven have sex, ad nauseum. We are also introduced to other male Carpathians, who all lack distinctive personalities, with the exception of Gregory, who manages to be even more of an arrogant alpha jerk than Mikhail and who manages to make me hate him from his first appearance in the book.

OK, a lot of things bothered me about this book, but I’m going to be nice and only give it a C- for a grade, because I believe the book was Christine Feehan’s first, and I’ve been told that this isn’t her best book by fans of this series. In fact, Feehan’s prose, though distinctly purple, is evocative, and I quite liked the gothic campiness of the setting. I also found the sex hot, and there are glimmerings of good writing amidst all the purple that kept me paying attention for as long as five minutes at a stretch.

But, oh, the bad… Where to start…

First, the characters. None of them have any depth, particularly Mikhail and Raven. The only thing that sticks out in my head after finishing this book was that Raven has silky, blue-black hair that is extremely long and luxuriant. All I can remember about Mikhail is the fact that Christine Feehan regularly refers to “the heavy muscles of his chest.” The secondary characters are barely perceptible, and the one character I did think could have developed into someone sort of interesting turns into a stock villain that Mikhail and Gregory have to deal with.

It is clear that there are no moral ambiguities in the Feehan-verse. You’re either one of the good guys, by which I mean the Carpathians, or you want to kill said Carpathians. Just once I would have loved for one of the villains to show more intelligence and a better motivation for his actions than “Bwahahaha! I am evil! Ph34r me and my mad evilness!!!11!!”

In conclusion: This book is brain candy. That’s pretty much its only redeeming factor in my opinion. But there are way better vampire romances out there. A C-, like I said, because she did have her moments, and there is a tiny part of me that wants to read the next book just to see if someone stabs Gregory repeatedly with a dull spoon.

Over on Hogwarts Hocus, someone apped Edward Cullen from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight , which for those of you who don’t know, is a YA vampire novel. Anyway, the app was not met with universal love and adoration. The word ‘suepire’ was used to describe him, which is pretty much true, a fact I will expand on whenever I get around to finishing Twilight.

However, just now, while blog-hopping, I came across mention of J. R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series of erotic paranormal romance novels. The reviews I’ve read lead me to think that just possibly I shouldn’t snark them just yet, but, come on. We have characters with names like Zsadist, Rhage, Phury, and, on a completely random note, Butch. Apparently they’re all bad-ass vampires who protect humans from the forces of evil, and they all have ZOMG tortured pasts.

I’m strangely compelled to read at least one of these books to find out if they’re as cringe-inducing as they sound–and, well, also to look for slashy subtext.

I just got random anon comment spam on my LJ. That’s never actually happened to me. *sniff* I'm so proud.

In other news, I sent a fangirly email to the Smart Bitches, and got a friendly response. This will make me squee for a while before I can forma cogent reply to it.

I also discovered these people while blog searching. Some of the posts were fascinating and thought-provoking. Some were just shrieky, but there was some interesting discussion going on, and there were book recs, too, which is always a plus.

I am currently in the middle of–let’s count them–five books, so last night I decided, hey, why not, I wanted to read something short that I could finish in a few minutes that was unrelated to anything else.

The first thing I tried was Understood by Maya Banks

Summary: When she breaks free from the bondage of her past, he’ll be waiting.
Jake Turner committed the ultimate mistake of falling in love with his best friend’s
wife. The distance he puts between them costs both him and Ellie Matthews dearly.
Jake will never forgive himself for not seeing what a bastard his friend was. Now
that Ellie is free from her nightmare, Jake waits, needing and wanting. He’ll be
there when Ellie is ready to spread her wings.

My thoughts: As someone who has in the past volunteered at a shelter for victims of domestic violence, I find myself curious to see whether books like this will deal with the issues in a thoughtful and sensitive manner. In this case, the answer is no. Our hero, Jake, is an alpha male straight out of central casting, which doesn’t exactly leave me hopeful for a long-lasting relationship between these two. And if I were a survivor of a horrible marriage, the last thing I’d appreciate is some jerk I thought was my friend saying things like, “I’m going to make you mine!” It would make me run the complete other way.

Of course, Ellie totally fails to do this, and we get to the part of the book where my suspension of disbelief packed its bags and left entirely. Which would be the part where Jake says the following:

He grinned. A cocky, self assured grin. “I’ll fit, sweetheart. You’ll take
all of me. In your mouth, in your pussy, and in your ass. And you’ll love
every minute of it.”

At that point it became abundantly clear that this was just another run of the mill contemporary erotic romance, and I was going to have to endure long, interminable sex scenes, so this book went straight to the land of “cannot finish, do not want”.

The other book I actually finished (mostly because it was incredibly short) was Wizard’s Moon by Michele Bardsley.

A wizard cursed…
Handsome and desperate wizard True Karn becomes human during the “wizard's moon”—the
only two nights of the month he can look for his mate. The rest of the time, he must
live in his monstrous, cursed form. When he rescues a pretty lady from the lascivious
attention of two guardsmen, he realizes that she could be the one he’s been searching
for.
A woman scorned…
Plain and reliable Alissa Rogers works in a house of ill repute—as an accountant.
She’s not pretty enough to be a prostitute, but it seems she’s still woman enough
to gain the attention of an infamous wizard…

My thoughts: This was fun. My suspension of disbelief was stretched for a while there, but I’d rate it a pretty solid B because neither of the characters actively pissed me off. As usual, the heroine turns out to have low self-esteem rather than be ugly, and she is a bit of a Mary Sue, but then, that describes 98 percent of heroines in romantic fiction.

The world-building here is way shaky. I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be urban fantasy, standard fantasy, or what. Alissa (whose last name changes once at completely random BTW! Bad editor! No cookie!) seems to live in a pretty modern house, but the taxis in this world are horse-drawn.

But, really, my “bzuh?” moment comes at the end, and if you want to avoid being spoiled for this book, which I’m sure you’re just all going to race out and buy, I suggest you not read farther.

OK, is that everybody else? Good.

At the end of the story, Alissa has to save True from his curse via the old heroic fantasy stand-by of… you guessed it..,. double penetration. Because True’s curse endows him with two dicks. And of course Alissa loves this. Me, I was trying to picture this actually happening, and smothering immature giggles.

I’ve had RL stuff come up this week, and have been distracted from my books. (Incidentally, I *love* filling out FAFSA forms. Except not.)

I’m alternately reading Kate Elliot’s King’s Dragon with MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead and Unappreciated.

The Elliot is wonderful! She’s a bit happy to exploit certain tired fantasy cliches, but, man, her characters. Our main protagonists in this volume are quite likeable kids, and I’m loving her world-building and plotting. I keep wanting to call the premise of her series a slightly less grim ASOIAF, which in this case is a compliment.

The MaryJanice, though. *Sigh* Betsy’s totally a caricature of herself in this book, and if I were a less tolerant reader, she’d have lost me. (As it is, I basically consider these books the literary equivalent of marshmallow fluff. They have no, y’know, depth or anything, but they’re fun to read.) Anyway, in the first two Betsy books, I identified with her struggle to have a life while still being queen of the vampires. Now… well, she lives in a mansion, she owns lots of random shit and probably has more money than God, tee hee, oh, whatever shall she do? I will definitely keep reading the book, but I’m not sure how many more in the series I’m going to be able to stand. Srsly, people, “Oh noes! I am living with a hot vampire who wants to smex me up!” is not a good basis for a conflict.

Summary: Jack goes to Toy City to seek his fortune, and encounters a stuffed bear named Eddie, several characters from nursery rhymes, and a plot to destroy Toy City forever.

The Good: Whatever else you can say about this book, it’s certainly unique. I didn’t really know what it was about when I started reading, and so was thrown for a loop in the first chapter. Every time I began to expect where the plot was going, it would go someplace entirely different. It was also quite funny in places, although the bits that made me laugh tended to occur when Rankin didn’t go for the obvious jokes.

The Bad: Most of what I didn’t like was purely subjective, and would probably work for other readers. The constant plot whiplashings made for a better story, but they gave me a headache. And I’m not sure Rankin’s humor entirely works for me.

Conclusion: This is a very entertaining read, and I would certainly check out other stuff by Rankin. B for this one.

This book is one of the mainstays of my childhood. In fact, I’ve read most of the original Oz books several times, and it’s nice to go back to them when I need a short, comfort read.

No doubt you all know the story. Dorothy gets transported to the land of Oz via a cyclone, has lots of wild adventures, and meets a scarecrow, a tin woodman, and a cowardly lion.

There is no possible way I can review this book objectively. A lot of my childhood has been wrapped up in the Oz stories, and, honestly, I think the books are so much more entertaining than the movies. I also vastly prefer Baum’s Oz to Gregory Maguar’s revisionist Oz, because I’m not looking for deep moral issues when I read these books.

That being said, of course, my grade is a definite A+. Highly recommended.

The Dare is one of those books I’ve been struggling with for months. Today, in an attempt to catch up on the backlog of books I’ve started and not finished, I decided to finish it…which, believe me, took effort.

Summary: Tired of self-denial and being cloistered by her father’s over-protectiveness, wealthy
painter Isabella takes a vacation alone.
Tough and way too cocky…
Police officer Luca Angello is self-confident, powerfully sexual, and on the trail
of a serial killer.
Isabella thinks Luca is shallow and only out for a good time. Luca thinks Isabella
needs some loosening up.
Fear brings them together…
When danger throws her into his arms, she discovers that he can reach her depths
in ways she never could have imagined.

The Good: (This is going to sound so shallow, but it has to be said.) I loved Luca. (In fact, I think Luca is the coolest name ever.) Despite being a cop, he was a very sweet guy who only exhibited a few minor alpha male romance novel cliched characteristics. I also really liked Isabella’s character in the beginning. She’s a bit neurotic, but I could understand her neuroses. The other positive thing about this story for me is that the sex scenes are toe-curlingly hot.

The bad: Sadly, I didn’t really enjoy this book, and I have the feeling that romantic suspense is not a genre for which I am capable of developing an appreciation. In this case, the suspense plot was, well, completely not suspenseful. In fact, big macho cop Luca spent more time trying to get inside Bella’s panties than trying to find any serial killers. And Bella? Not exactly the brightest crayon in the box. She does a lot of impulsive things for no apparent reason when the author decides it’s time for us to experience more of the “plot”, and, consequently, I wanted to smack her. A lot. Also, there are a few scenes where Luca’s fellow cops give him love advice… in a macho way, of course, which, uh, yeah, I totally didn’t buy.

All in all: Seriously meh. The author has moments where it seems she can tell a decent story, but those moments were few and far between. However, the fact is that I didn’t actively hate this book, so it receives a C grade for me. Maybe next time I’ll find a romantic suspense story that works better for me… But I don’t think this is it.

Beth asks for summer reading recommendations for Smart Bitches Day, which, technically, just ended for me, but it’s still Monday somewhere.

At any rate, despite how it may seem sometimes, I enjoy reccing books. But this topic was hard for me, because when I thought about books that transported me to exotic places, my beloved A Song of Ice and Fire came readily to mind. Unfortunately, that series doesn't imbue the reader with a rolicking sense of adventure, at least, it didn't for me. I was transported to an exotic place, where little kids get thrown off tower walls, main characters die brutally, and everyone's amoral. Plus, I didn't actually read the books in summer.

The past two summers I've spent a lot of time randomly staying with my parents because of preparations to move somewhere. Last summer, I read most of the Julia Quinn Bridgerton books, until I realized that her books had quit being funny and became angstful, which wasn't what I wanted to read at all.

The summer before that I read all of Tad Williams's Otherland books, which are wonderful and rivetting, although not nearly as dark and twisted as A Song of Ice and Fire.

This summer… well, who knows? I guess we'll have to see. What are your favorite vacation-y books, O gentle readers?

I had this whole long review of Callahan’s Lady by Spider Robinson that I wrote up earlier today, and it’s gone. So I guess I’ll summarize, because that review was a work of genius, and cannot be recovered.

Book was interesting, but I need a break. Female narrator didn’t have a unique enough narrative voice, IMO. And I missed the healing buttsex. Also, Spider Robinson hates feminists. A because I was riveted throughout, despite the things that bugged me.

So, given the numbers in my recent poll, I should start reading the third Kushiel story. However, I wanted something shorter, and–some of you should probably prepare to get offended–I find Carey’s books to be easily put-downable in the beginning.

Anyway, both Shantih and Atalanta Pendrag said I should read the Darkover books, and, because they are wise women, I figured I would, and according to something I found on the Internet, this particular book is the best place to start chronologically.

The book consists of a novella, “The Planet Savers”, and a short story, “The Waterfall.”

“The Planet Savers” introduces us to Jay Allison, a Terran doctor who is generally an asshole who kicks puppies for a living. Unfortunately, he’s a great surgeon, and he also grew up among the Trailmen, a race of tree-dwelling residents of the planet Darkover. The Trailmen are somehow immune to the sickness that’s sweeping the planet, and Jay’s the planet’s only hope. He’s supposed to get the trailmen to agree to be tested by Terran medical experts. Unfortunately, because Jay’s an asshole, the other terrans decide to hypnotize him and bring forth his subsidiary personality, who narrates this story. Jason is a much nicer guy, although he lacks Jay’s rational, disciplined nature. The rest of the story is a rolicking adventure, in which Jason struggles to figure out who he is.

“The Waterfall” confused me on first reading. It seems to be about a noblewoman of Darkover who discovers she has empathic powers, and, because she is not a romance author, she uses those powers for evil.

My verdicts: I really should have paid attention to Shantih and Atalanta Pendrag‘s recommendations on which Darkover book to start with, because this one was very meh. “Planet Savers” was definitely the more engaging of the short stories, for me, but it suffered from the fact that (1) I called every single plot point ahead of time, and (2) I would think that if people were going to start reaching for subsidiary personalities, that’d be the sort of thing that would require consent. Also, I really hated the way Bradley ended her book. Basically, one character walked up, announced, “I am a deus ex machina,” and fixed everything.

“The Waterfall” was much shorter, but I felt like I was missing something crucial, like, I don’t know, a knowledge of Darkovan culture that would have made sense. It is definitely not something that’d make much sense to a newbie to the series.

Summary: Just a big fat meh all around. C for this one.

I came across this just now.

My favorite bit from the original post is here:

Putting down editors and writers also displays a lack of knowledge about this industry.
Romance is the most successful genre of all time because people have banded together
with a collective consciousness to do good not evil. This is true camaraderie. I
hope it continues or we will perish.

I love that asserssion that romance writers are fighting evil. It makes me feel less bad about those days when I want to write, say, Luna/Peeves smut. Because, really, if it has a happy ending, then that’s one less point for Voldemort… or something.

I was going to address other points about that post, but I’ve been cold-cocked by that phrase about fighting evil.

Summary: More adventures at Callahan’s Place, which, as you may recall, is the best damn bar ever. This time we get three comparatively long short stories instead of several collected ones.

The Good: I still love the premise behind these short stories. The set we’re presented here, though, are more serious tales than the Callahan stories in the last two books. Especially, we get lots more insight into the characters of Jake Stonebender, who has narrated all the Callahan tales, and Mike Callahan himself.

The Bad: This is such a minor nit to pick, but it still bugs me. I hate it every time Jake the character or one of the other Callahan’s patrons mentions that they read science fiction. There’s something smug in the way Robinson’s characters bring up the science fiction they all read. It feels a lot like a self-insert to me, an indication that Spider Robinson and his characters would totally all be part of the good old SF boy’s club if they had a chance. And now I have started looking for all the Robert Heinlein alusions.

Grade: I really did enjoy this book, but it’s definitely not my favorite. On the other hand, it was so much better than its prequel, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and give this an A-.