She-Wolf Review

SPELLCASTER, by Claudia Gray, is a hard one for me to review.  It’s one of those books that looked really great on paper, got good reviews from various sources I trust, and featured a dark New England town, witches, and angsty teens.  With my recent YA obsession, I thought this was going to be a real winner.  Blame it on high expectations but I came away with an overwhelming sense of, “meh” when I finished this one. 

The strength of SPELLCASTER can really be found in its plot and its world of magic.  Let’s start with plot.  A young girl from Chicago, Nadia Caldani, moves to a small New England town, Captive’s Sound, with her father and her younger brother.  Her mother basically abandoned them and Nadia is filled with hurt, bitterness and a fierce determination to take her mother’s place by protecting and caring for her father and brother.  Nadia is also a witch and she immediately recognizes a darkness lurking underneath the small town exterior, a darkness that only seems to be growing stronger.  Banding together with two unlikely friends, Mateo and Verlaine, Nadia decides to go to battle and use all her witchy strength to defeat evil and save Captive’s Sound.  The plot moved at a good pace and there were several nice reveals that kept me turning the pages and reluctantly putting down the book at night.   

However, by far the most original aspect of this story is its magic system.  I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.  Witches can only be women, educated and empowered through female relatives and coven sisters.  This adds another bitter pill to Nadia’s abandonment by her mother – without her, Nadia has little hope of advancing in her witchcraft.  Here’s the real gem – spells are cast through pure memory and emotion.  

The sight of something wondrous, never before seen.

The breaking of a bond that should never have been broken.

Cold beyond desolation.

Loyalty beyond life.

In order to cast this spell, Nadia must call on memories that evoke these strong emotions and then feel them purely and deeply.  Is that brilliant or what?  This was such an original approach to magic that it made the paranormal aspects of SPELLCASTER feel very fresh.  

Though well-written and plotted, the major weaknesses for me in SPELLCASTER were its main heroine and hero, Nadia and Mateo. They were so cardboard that it was hard for me to, well, frankly, care about them.  Both are motherless, both dealing with adult size issues for such a young age, yet both lacked an evocative depth of emotion.  Nadia shined when casting but other than that, I had a hard time connecting with her.  It’s not a good sign when the side characters completely steal the show – Verlaine, the spunky, sharp, and funny friend; Liz, Mateo’s enigmatic best friend; and Asa, the demon, who is the major reason why I want to read the next book.  All of these characters held my interest five times more than Nadia and Mateo.  And the lukewarm romance between the two didn’t help.

I do want to give major props to Gray for giving us a diverse cast of characters.  There’s color in this world and a non-traditional relationship with Verlaine’s two fathers.  Though this was not a major part of the story, I appreciate Gray’s creation of a town that had a level of diversity not often found in many YA paranormal books.

With SPELLCASTER I vacillated between a two and three howl rating.  I decided to give it three howls for two reasons – great magic and an ending that piqued my interest.  A side character, Asa the demon, seems poised to play a bigger role and the mystery and conspiracy at the heart of the dark magic buried in Captive’s Sound hasn’t been fully understood, which does make me want to know what happens next.  With these borderline reviews, the deciding factor is always, “would I read the next one?”  The answer is, yes.  But, honestly, I might borrow it from the library.   

3 HOWLS – Good but with reservations.

She-Wolf Review

This was another beautiful addition to Delilah S. Dawson’s wonderfully original Blud Series.   In THE PECULIAR PETS OF MISS PLEASANCE, Dawson takes us out of Criminy Stain’s caravan and sets us in the London of the Blud world.  Here we meet Frannie Pleasance, a pet shop owner, dealing with the loss of her family and trying dearly to protect a secret.

What I love about this series is the world.  Every time I open one of Dawson’s Blud stories, it feels like sinking into a dream.  The world is dark but whimsical, and through her characters there is always a tenderness and pure romanticism that is achingly beautiful.  In this particular story, we see this through the budding relationship between Frannie and Thom Maccallan, a fireman that helps save her house and shop from burning down.  He’s also Scottish and wears a kilt, which are always big plusses in my book.  Their connection is immediate and he sees in Frannie someone who may need his protection and so begins the very sweet dance of two lonely hearts coming together.

In the background is Caspar, a side character in the first book in the series, who is also interested in Frannie.  I was hoping that Dawson wouldn’t make this into a novella about a tired love triangle.  What Dawson does is better and I love that Frannie knows her mind, doesn’t fall for the wrong guy, and is just so darned independent that it makes you smile and cheer for her. 

Frannie’s desperate to protect a secret and when you find out what that secret is, it’s an enchanting moment, a bit of light in the murkiness that is Dawson’s London.  In a way, I think you may have to read WICKED AS SHE WANTS, the first book in the series, to fully appreciate what Frannie is protecting only because in that book you get a better sense of the darkness that is the Blud world.

Someone is out to get Frannie and you’re not sure why. The novella is well-paced in uncovering the mystery of it, and opening up a new one, and the conclusion is definitely satisfying.

If you haven’t read this series, I really wish you would.  I am honestly swept away by the whimsy and the darkness of this world every time I read one of its stories.  

My Soulmate. May not be perfect, but it’s perfect for me.

**A review copy of this novella was provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.* 

She-Wolf Review

ANCHORED was an unexpected treat of a novella.  It’s a great take on the guardian angel mythology and it introduces us to a new world and heroine that left me wanting more.

Central to this story is the relationship between Susannah Marsh and Jason Delacourt.  Susannah is a tough loner, strong and stubborn.  She’s a guardian angel charged with protecting the citizens of Biloxi, Mississippi.  Susannah likes to work alone but is forced to take on Jason as a partner.  He’s a healer, someone who can heal with just a touch.  And with a sketchy past of his own, he’s no angel.  It’s this partnership that’s one of the more interesting aspects of this world created by Larrieu. 

On one level, it’s an interesting worldbuilding element.  Guardians are powerful but they need a healer to help them maintain their strength and energy as the city and its citizens can be draining on a guardian’s power.  This is a new take on the angel mythology and it adds an interesting dynamic to Susannah and Jason’s budding relationship.  Healers and guardians tend to have romantic relationships and it begs the question as to whether or not there is a magical element to their chemistry. 

On a romantic level, the chemistry between Jason and Susannah is off the charts sexy.  I loved the back and forth between the two and chuckled at Jason’s complete irreverence for Susannah.  No intimidation at all.  He ruffles her feathers, so to speak, and it’s fun to watch that happen. 

My minor quibble with ANCHORED is that this relationship resolves a bit too quickly.   I wish it had played out a little more, perhaps even resolving in the next book rather than at the end of the novella. 

I know I’ve focused a lot on the relationship but the world itself is also interesting -  angels anchored to cities, its citizens feeding the energy and strength of the guardians; vampires and, I assume, other supernatural creatures are kept in line by the guardians; the sultry Southern atmosphere of the setting – all these elements added up to a wonderful first introduction to a new world.  There’s also some great action and a very cinematic scene where Susannah has to infiltrate a nest of vampires preying on humans in her city.  My favorite image is of her sneaking into a hotel room, the heart of the nest, and a female victim who is tied and gagged, sees her.  Susannah holds a finger up to her own lips to let the woman know to keep quiet and she then spreads her wings…there’s something eery about that image.  The film version…definitely slo-mo, maybe John Woo directed?

It wasn’t until I had an impromptu Twitter conversation with the author that I learned that in the next book in the series, Susannah and Jason are side characters in a story that takes place in the same world.  Color me intrigued.  Though I think these two could definitely carry a full length, in fact, ANCHORED could have easily been a full length, I’m definitely curious to see who and what Larrieu has in store for us next.

If you’re interested in a new guardian angel mythology, an interesting world, and a sexy heroine and hero to sink your teeth into, pick up ANCHORED. 

4.5 Howls – Highly recommended!

She-Wolf Review

TIMELESS CONFLICT is an interesting blend of a Dan Brown-conspiracy like storyline with a heavy dose of the supernatural. Though I liked the originality of the shapeshifter race based on Egyptian mythology, there were elements of the book that kept me from connecting with the characters and the story in general.

The book’s strongest point really lies in its creepiness.  I appreciate a paranormal story that’s not afraid to embrace the sheer evil or violence of its creatures.  In TIMELESS CONFLICT, we’re introduced to a shapeshifter, based on the Anubis god of Egyptian mythology, who eats people.  Loved that idea.  Now, this same creature is also the lead romantic interest of a human character.  I appreciated the inherent conflict of someone who eats people being in love with a human.  I think with vampires you can sexy up the violence but creating a supernatural being who gorges on humans…well, it’s hard to make that sexy.  The writer has to work even harder to “humanize” him in the eyes of the readers and it makes for a difficult to redeem main character. 

While I appreciate the boldness of this choice, the rest of the book’s elements didn’t work for me.  The main conflict centers around a race of shapeshifters who have spent centuries being hunted by the Masons.  A young college student, Rachel, gets caught in the crossfire and her world is turned upside down as her relationship with Warren, a member of the Anubis clan, comes under the scrutiny of the Masons.  These two must stay on the run in order to stay alive.  By far the biggest problem for me was the instalove between Warren and Rachel.  He ate (yes, ate) an acquaintance of hers and she saw him do it.  But Rachel is a forgiving soul and is able to look past this and see the vulnerable person inside Warren.  Yes, he has a tragic past; yes, he is full of understandable anger towards humans; yes, at one point, he saves her life.  But he ate her friend. I can’t see how you look past that and then, several days later, proclaim your love for that very person, someone you barely know.  I couldn’t suspend that disbelief.  In fact, had that conflict been strung out over the course of the story, this push and pull of feelings for Warren, their relationship would have been far more interesting.

There were also some stylistic issues that bogged down the storyline.  There’s a large cast of characters with constantly shifting POVs.  These could often shift from paragraph to paragraph which could be confusing.  This was particularly true for the first couple of chapters but I eventually got the hang of it.  There was also quite a bit of detail in the first half of the book that slowed down what could have been an effective fast pace – for example, there was a lot of brand name details that didn’t add to painting a larger picture of the characters and there’s one scene in particular, several pages detailing Rachel leaving the hospital, that just wasn’t necessary.  Editing some of that out would have sped up the pacing of the book quite nicely.  

TIMELESS CONFLICT has some strong ideas and an interesting shapeshifter mythology. However, overall, I couldn’t connect with the story enough to give it a high recommendation.    

2 HOWLS – OK. Not great & not a strong recommendation.

She-Wolf Review

DON’T CALL ME ANGEL has all the right ingredients – compelling opening, tough heroine, and an ending that has the reader wanting to know what happens next.  For all these wonderful ingredients, there was definitely something lacking for me that kept me from being wholly engrossed by this prequel.

The story opens with Six, an angel who has been cast out of Heaven, literally clawing her way out of Hell.  I love the dramatic imagery this scene evokes  – an angel clawing her way out of the pits of Hell.  She makes it out and into the world above, our world, where she tries to blend in and start a new life.  Six escapes with her friend or acquaintance, Alden.  While Six feels some empathy for humans and holds some value for human life, Alden does not.  Therein lies one level of conflict as Alden rampages against humans and Six tries to stop him.  It also goes a little deeper.  While Six does have some empathy for humans, she also knows that murdering them will alert the powers that be in Hell of her escape. She doesn’t need the attention. 

It was a miracle that I’d survived Hell with my sanity intact.  I was weak.  It had taken me too long to find my morals, and I was unfit to apply them.

I found this dichotomy in Six to be interesting and the dramatic potential of it all is exciting – she’s conflicted, she knows what’s right and wrong, she has empathy, but there’s a coldness to her, and it takes her a while to act.  Six is also filled with anger and resentment toward humans, towards Heaven, towards Hell.  For all the dramatic potential, Six felt almost too distanced, too cold; her lack of emotion kept me from really caring about her and her conflict.  I also wanted to feel that internal conflict more.  In all fairness, I think it’s hard to develop this in such a short novella but I felt the lack of it nonetheless.

Now, the ending…well, played.  Nice twist.  You learn why she’s named Six and you learn exactly what she’s running from and it makes you want to know more. 

All in all, I think this was a good prequel to a new series.  With a full-length novel, we’ll be able to get the development of the tormented Six that I was left craving.  She has such incredible potential to be a more compelling heroine that I’ll read the first book in the series to learn what happens to her.

3 HOWLS – Good but with some flaws.

STORM FORCE EXCERPT

Kell spotted the bird as soon as its wingtips cleared the edge of the cypress stand at the eastern rim of Bayou Cote Blanche. For a moment, he indulged a hope it might be a hawk in search of fish, or a pelican, or a cormorant, or a fucking giant mutant hummingbird.

Anything but an eagle.

“It’s her.” At the sound of his voice, Gator raised his spotted head and focused sharp, mismatched eyes on the horizon, barking furiously in his Catahoula big-dog voice, usually reserved for alligators and swamp rats.

Kell had been sitting on the porch of his cabin at Cote Blanche since Nik’s phone call from New Orleans two hours ago, waiting to see who’d arrive first—the man or the bird.

            Should’ve known it would be the freakazoid eagle with the deceptively sweet name of Robin. He’d come to think of her as Razorblade Robin. Nik would have to rent a boat in Jeanerette and navigate the serpentine waterways of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Swamp to get here. Razorblade Robin could just sprout feathers and soar.

            The midday sun glinted off the glossy reddish-brown wings of the golden eagle as it swooped over the smooth, murky water of the bayou and landed with a harsh caw at the end of his dock. Gator rose to his feet and looked up at Kell, asking permission to chase.

“Sorry, buddy. You don’t want to mess with that one. She can take you.” Hell, she could take both of them.

Kell took a final look at the pile of papers he’d been reading—notes about his team’s new assignment. Mostly, he’d been studying the photo on top of the stack. The woman, Emory Chastaine, an environmental activist well known in tree-hugger circles, had been photographed from a distance with a telephoto lens that gave the image a grainy feel, made worse by his generator-powered printer. But he could tell she was tall, athletic-looking in a t-shirt and jeans, shoulder-length blond hair, pretty in an all-American kind of way.

Not his image of a terrorist. Which made her even more dangerous.

            Gator sprang off the porch as the eagle strutted down the dock toward them. He approached the bird in a crouch, his growls echoing off the still water. Damn dog never did listen worth a flip. Kell leaned back in his chair to watch the show. With a screech and a blur of feathers seconds before Gator reached her, the eagle morphed into a petite, waifish brunette.

Make that a naked, waifish brunette with a snark-tastic attitude who arched an eyebrow when Kell’s vicious watchdog turn into a slobbering, tail-wagging fool, jumping up and down so vigorously his black and white spots seemed to blur. You’d think the hound saw birds turn into people every day.

            If Gator went the crotch-sniffing route, Kell might have to die of pure humiliation.

            Not like the naked bird-woman came as any big surprise. He reached for the t-shirt he’d thrown across the other porch chair and tossed it to her as she approached, Gator dancing around her legs. “Put this on.”

            Robin Ashton, five-foot-nothing of shapeshifter and the tracker for Kell’s new Omega Force team, caught the shirt and used it to wipe the sweat off her face. “It’s like a sauna out here. Pretty, though, if you’re into the primordial.”

She turned to study the bayou, a minor niche in the massive Atchafalaya basin, and Kell made it a point to keep his eyes away from her ass. It wasn’t that he wanted to look at it, exactly, but he was a guy, and it was right in front of him.

***

You can read my review of the first installment of this new series here.  I loved it, highly recommend it, and am looking forward to the next release!

She-Wolf Review

As we all know, there is quite a bit Susannah Sandlin love here, at She-Wolf Reads, so when presented with the opportunity to review her new serial series STORM FORCE, my response was “Hell, yes!”  I was particularly excited to read this because it’s a loose spinoff of her beloved Penton Legacy series.  This is also my first serial review.  It’s a bit difficult because I can’t give a review of the story as a whole — a beginning, middle, and end — but rather, I can give you my impressions and opinions about the start of the story. If the point of the first episode of a serial is to whet a reader’s appetite, Sandlin more than succeeds at that for me. 

With this first episode we are introduced to Jack “Kell” Kellison, former Army Ranger, nursing an injury in secret and heading a counter-terrorism team, Omega Force.  This covert group is made up of human and supernatural operatives tasked with investigating and thwarting acts of domestic terrorism.   Jack’s team is interesting.  Sandlin introduced enough information about them to make me want to know more – members include someone who can learn the history of something by touch, shifters, and a tech genius.  But it’s really Kell that takes center stage and I like him – tough, smart, and leading a somewhat lonely existence.  His life has been centered on the military and his injury threatens that life which also makes him a bit vulnerable.  It serves as a reminder of his humanity, especially when his fellow Omega Force members are supernatural and stronger.    

This team is thrown into investigating a bombing in Houston and their primary suspect is Mori Chastaine.  She is the biggest mystery of this first installment.  She’s young, the head of an environmental activist organization, and, I think, not human.  We don’t know what the heck she is but we do know something is not right.  Sandlin hints at enough darkness, power, and fear in her background to keep me on edge wanting to know what she is, who her family is, and why she’s been implicated in the bombing.  When you find out who may be pulling the strings, it makes her mystery even more interesting.  

What Sandlin always gets right is a sense of place and her character interactions.  I always feel like I’m sitting right in one her scenes, whether it’s in the middle of the Bayou or in downtown Houston.  Her ability to describe a place and make it tangible to the reader is remarkable.  I also love her character interactions.  She gets camaraderie right, she did it in Penton and she does in Storm Force.  The hardest part of the serial is that I want more.  But I guess that’s the point! 

I really enjoyed episode one of STORM FORCE.  The conflict is compelling and the characters are interesting.  I’m definitely looking forward to reading the next installment.  Highly recommended!

4 HOWLS – Excellent and highly recommended

She-Wolf Review

When I saw the cover for THE DEVIL’S METAL by Karina Halle, I immediately wanted to read the book.  Its gothic quality and intriguing title piqued my interest, and when you add to this Halle’s reputation for writing addictive stories, well, I knew this book was for me.  Oddly enough, what worked and didn’t work for me wasn’t what I expected.  My predilection for the paranormal is what attracted me to this story but what kept me reading was the 70’s rock scene that Halle so deftly renders for the reader.  This book would have been perfect if its paranormal promise rose to the level of its wonderfully drawn rock and roll backdrop.

It’s 1974 and Dawn Emerson is 21 years old and unsure of what’s next for herself.  She wants to be a music journalist but other than working for small publications, local and college newspapers, she hasn’t gotten the break she needs to take her career to the next level.  A job too good to be true comes along – covering Hybrid, her favorite rock band, on their US tour for Creem Magazine.  What she soon discovers is nothing is what it seems and that this tour may not have the finale she was expecting.

What I absolutely loved is Halle’s ability to capture this moment in 70’s rock – a band on the road, facing the pinnacle of success or the downward spiral to mediocrity; the band dynamics, the hate and the love; the bus, the venues, the drugs, the sex, the groupies.  Halle takes the reader on this wild ride called a rock tour, she demystifies it, shows it for what it is, warts and all.  At the same time, when the music starts and the band is on fire, she makes you see how you can lose yourself in it and crave it.

It could go well, it could go all bad, but it was going to be epic in whichever way it went.

I was going to throw up.

Halle throws her young heroine, Dawn, into this world and it’s sink or swim for her.  She’s completely starstruck when it comes to Hybrid, especially Sage Knightly, the bands enigmatic guitarist.  As a young journalist who needs to learn to distance herself from her subjects, she makes mistakes.  Big mistakes.  But she learns from them and doesn’t let it hold her back from doing her job.  I love that she’s a woman in a male dominated business, constantly being mistaken for a groupie and having to battle for respect.  Dawn is an engaging heroine – strong and smart with that touch of awkwardness that makes her relatable.

I also loved Halle’s voice.  There are moments of unexpected humor that had me laughing out loud. 

“God, you’re beautiful, Dawn,” he murmured.

I raised my head to see if he was talking to me or my crotch.

I love the injection of that humor in a very sexy love scene and Halle’s writing has moments like this throughout the book.

However, what I didn’t connect with in THE DEVIL’S METAL were its paranormal aspects.  A supernatural/horror element is lightly introduced in the beginning of the story and is slowly developed until the end when it moves full force into the paranormal.  Blame it on television but the creepy elements weren’t very creepy to me.  They were a bit expected with the exception of one moment – a tour bus in a sandstorm (brilliant scene).  The reveal at the end was also underwhelming and felt rushed.  I didn’t find the supernatural dilemma to be very compelling.  In fact, I could have done without the whole supernatural storyline altogether.  I wish the last third of the book had stayed focused on this young female rock journalist navigating the world of the rock band on tour and her budding relationship with one of the musicians.  

What it comes down to is that what Halle gets right, she gets very, very right.  For me, that was the 70’s rock scene and a young woman on the job assignment of a lifetime.  What didn’t work for me, oddly enough, were the paranormal aspects.  For some reason the supernatural world in THE DEVIL’S METAL just didn’t click with me.  Would I read something else my Karina Halle?  Most definitely.  I love her voice and her Experiment in Terror series seems to be a classic to many readers.  Would I continue with the Devil’s series?  I’m not sure.  This was a solid read but one that I wish had gone in a different direction.

3 HOWLS – Good but with some flaws.