My mom gave me this book a while back on the pretense of it being a ‘just because’ present.  The truth was that she wanted to read it, but felt guilty spending the money on herself.  I bugged her about that just a little bit, but I love her lots.

Anyway, it started off that I was a bit uncertain about how it was going to be.  I’ve read my fare share of  Urban fantasy books and it seems to be a tough genre to get into without just coming out cheesy.   I think that every writer secretly wants to be the next Stephanie Meyer, but the truth is that a lot of people will say that even she didn’t do a very good job of it.    So, when I read the book description I was prepared to be disappointed, I have to admit.

The beginning of the book was a bit slow, and I thought that Harkness approached the whole “I’m a witch, my family are witches” thing a bit awkwardly, and yes with a fair amount of cheese.   I found it a bit cringe worthy, to be honest, but soldiered ahead hoping that plot would make up for what the characterization lacked.  I was relived when it did!

I’m a big fan of vampires and Deborah handled his personality a lot better than she did the silly witch’s.  I wasn’t too thrilled with the way she handled the idea of demons, though.  However, I suppose if Meyer can make vampires sparkly “vegetarians” then Harkness is allowed to make demons hipsters with ADD.

The deeper I got into the novel, the less awkward it became.  The plot sailed along, becoming romantic, exciting and intriguing.  I loved the relationships developed between the characters and the brief glances of history brought into the story.  Before I knew it, I was approaching the end, and there was not nearly enough pages left to tie everything up neatly.   I started to feel a little wary of how this was going to end.   I read the last page and at the very last sentence cried out, “NOooooo!”  just like Darth Vader, when it said the next novel would be out in 2012.   I really didn’t want it to end, I was so upset!   I certainly didn’t want to have to wait over a year to read the next one.  This is the exact reason why I much prefer to read completed series, I am not a fan of delayed satisfaction.

The novel ended so well that I can’t wait for the next one.  I think  it’s going to be along the lines of an historical novel, which is my favorite genre.  Combined with witches, vampires and demons I think it’ll be a hit.

In the mean time, I recommend this one as a fun, girly read.   You can get it here: A Discovery of Witches

When I was a kid my family and I used to take month long vacations every summer of a fishing camp where we’d take the boat out on the ocean and catch salmon. Since we went there every year I made friends with the other kids who also went every year. As such I had my normal friends and then I had my summer friends. This worked out really great about 99% of the time. However, one summer in my awkward early teens the inevitable happened: a girl screwed things up. I won’t go into the gory details but one summer at the camp I found myself with a lot of time on my hands so I picked up a book my mother had just finished reading called Boys Life by Robert McCammon. Almost 20 years later it still remains one of my favorite books. A couple years ago I re-read Boys Life and picked up some other Robert McCammon books including Swan Song, and Stinger.

I finally got around to reading Stinger this month. The story is set in the little Texas town of Inferno. It’s a tiny, dusty, little town that’s on it’s last legs. The copper mine that gave rise to the town has run dry and life is slowly leaking out of the town. The story opens as we meet the local vet, Jessie, her teacher husband Tom and their two kids, teen-age Ray (a boy) and 6-year old Stevie (a girl). They’re lamenting the fact that they have to move as the Inferno high-school is closing after this year and Tom will be out of a job. This sets up a number of short chapters where we meet the major players in the story. Ed Vance the fat, lazy and crooked Sheriff. Mack Cade the owner of a shady chop-shop who pays Vance to look the other way.  Cody Lockett and Rick Jurado two high-school ”gang’ leaders, ‘Sarge’ Dennison the slightly crazy high-school janitor/WW2 veteran and several other minor characters who pop up though the story.

While on their way to a vet visit Jessie and Stevie witness something fall from the sky in a ball of fire, even more bizarre it’s being chased by the ever popular black helicopters. Something falls from this thing and crashes into Jessie’s truck leaving them wrecked on the side of the road. When the smoke clears the ball of fire has landed somewhere far to the south and Stevie finds a curious black ball in the ruins of the trucks engine. The ball calls so her with a song only she can hear and she’s compelled by some force to keep it. See where this is going? So did I. Eventually the alien living inside the ball takes over young Stevie and we meet ‘Daufin’, the alien fugitive who brings trouble to this little down. Shortly after the army gets involved and something else crashes from the sky. A massive black pyramid comes down right on top of Mack Cade’s chop-shop and Daufin labels it as ‘Stinger’ the titular bad guy who traps the town under a glowing purple dome — I think Stephen King may have read this book as the dome coming down in Under the Dome is awfully similar to how it happens in Stinger.

From here Stinger turns into a b-movie horror film full of predictable plot lines. Stinger uses the towns people (in vaguely horrific ways) to try and find Daufin and Daufin reveals what Stringer really is and what his motivation for finding her is. We meet an Air Force colonel with the laughable job of investigating alien encounters — but wait! Alien encounters happen all the time, we’re apparently right next to some kind of stellar highway! — There’s no real guesswork you need to do here, Stinger is a very straightforward book that doesn’t leave you guessing in any way. McCammon even tends to go out of his way at points to explain things to you. The characters are given some back story but I found them to be mostly two dimensional. The rivalry between Cody and Rick as the big bad gang leaders felt ridiculous and poorly written. I attribute this to the fact that it was written in the 80′s and not that McCammon is a bad writer, the decade just called out for cheesy rivalries like this. Additionally the friction between Cody and is father (the drunken Curt Lockett who’s all sad about his dead wife) feels transparent and cliché right up to the inevitable redemption of the father that feels like it came right out of Independence Day (again, this predates that movie by a decade so I can forgive that).

All that said, this is a book that will keep you reading and provide some entertainment. It may not be great, world changing, fiction but it is a good read. I never once found myself not wanting to turn that page and in my book (ha ha) that’s good enough. Now, the major downside is that this book is out of print. You’re not going to find it in any of the big book sellers and the amazon link contained here will only give you access to some (overpriced) used copies. If you want to find this you’ll probably have to hit up a library, scour some used book stores, or get lucky at a garage sale While it’s probably not good enough to waste your time trying to activly find unless you’re a real big Robert McCammon fan if you see it sitting on a table in a used book store or at a garage sale grab it, it’s a good read for those lazy summer days.

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Stinger

When I reviewed “Parallel Attraction” I mentioned that I was only able to find one other book in the series.  At the time, I thought that “Parallel Fire” was the second in the series, but I was wrong; the second is called “Parallel Heat”, very easy to confuse the two.    ”Parallel Fire” is actually the novella which completes the series.

While the first novel in the series is the story of Jared and Kelsey, this novella is the brief glance at the beginning of the relationship between Anna and and her commanding officer, Nevin.  While the heat and passion of the first novel is still there, and I really enjoyed reading it, I felt that a lot more could have been added to this novella to flesh it out into a novel.    What I really wanted to see was Anna’s back story, and more about her being a secret protector to the king.  I feel, however, that I can’t say much more on the back story, because this is the last one in the series;  there very well may be a lot in the previous novels that I’m not aware of.

Back story aside, giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming the back story was already covered in other novels,  I still would have enjoyed the story a lot more if it hadn’t been rushed.   The story concept was great and the relationship developed was powerful, however, I felt like it just came out of no where and developed like a lightning strike.   Perhaps that was the point?  It could be that I’m prejudice against novellas; I like them only marginally better than short stories.  The problem for me is there isn’t enough time to develop a connection between characters and the reader so I end up being an observer, rather than feeling involved.

I feel that all my problems are based around not having read the rest of the series; I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t whet my appetite.  This it really unfortunate, because I can’t get the novels unless I order paper copies from Amazon.com (which is inconvenient for me, being in Canada).  That, and I’d really rather buy (Kobo) ebooks, cuz I don’t have anymore room for new books on my bookshelf.  Rest assured that I will be keeping an eye out for the other novels or ebooks in Canadian stores, and snatching them up as I find them.

In the mean time, you can find this one, here:

Parallel Fire

I discovered Deidre Knight through my search for authors to follow on Twitter.  I followed her account to her website where she has a list of  her books, and an excerpt from each.   After reading the excerpt for “Parallel Attraction” I knew I was sold; it was exactly the type of story that appeals to me.   I immediately went to Kobobooks.com and bought the ebook.

Yesterday I spent the entire day reading, because I just couldn’t put it down.  Not since Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie and Claire has a relationship between two characters captured me as this one between Jared, an alien rebel king fighting for his people and humans alike, and his destined human love, Kelsey.   Their love is incredibly passionate, open and innocent, and seems to radiate off the page in nearly visible waves of hot pink hearts and red kiss marks.

I have to repress a love sick sigh, just thinking about them….

Alright, so what about the novel, besides the romance, which appealed to me?  First and foremost, it’s original.  This is not the typical boy meets girl and they get it on story.   It involves ALIENS!  Does it get any better than that?   Yes!  ROYAL aliens…. royal REBEL aliens!  The awesome just keeps getting better and better, because it’s also the first book in a series, so it doesn’t have to end for weeks!

Alrighty, I think I’m exclamation pointed out.   Can you tell it’s been a while since I’ve found a book that I was really into?

Gushing aside, what I really enjoyed is that the novel took a concept as old as time and gave it a twist that I’ve never read before.   I have to see if I can find anymore sci-fi romances, because I believe I now have a new favorite genre.  I also loved the novel because it started completely innocently, and despite the all the attraction and steamy sex it never lost it’s innocence.

If I had one complaint about the book is that the ending seemed to go on forever.  After all the excitement was over (and it was very exciting and involved alternate realities!), and everyone is happy and life goes on, it felt like it just kept going on, and on.  At the end of each chapter I kept expecting it to be the end, and I was excited to go onto the next novel in the series.

The unfortunate thing is that I was only able to find the next novel…all the rest of the series I can’t find!  The Kobo store doesn’t sell them and both Chapters  and Amazon.ca don’t have them.   Even all the city libraries don’t have any copies!    I’m horribly depressed by how that turned out, so if anyone has a copy that you’re willing to part with, let me know.  I’m not above taking charity.

This novel, at least, is available and you can find it here:

Parallel Attraction

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