I have had the pleasure of getting an advanced reader copy of Fantastic Hope, the new paranormal anthology that was released on April 7, 2020. This arc was provided via Netgalley, the best place for reviewers and avid readers to get and review new books. This anthology is a great way to be introduced to a wide variety of authors and writing styles. You may just buy it for one author and find a whole new library to read during this uncertain time. With a wide variety of bestselling authors this anthology has a lot of bang for your buck. While I could go crazy with this book review and write pages upon pages and bury you in paper, time is at a premium. This anthology is a great way to get acquainted with a number of authors and their writing styles. You may buy it for the latest in one series and end up with a new series to read, to love, and maybe even obsess about. These authors each have unique backgrounds and those backgrounds inform each story with details that will delight readers, . Rather than going through each story and providing spoilers that might make longtime fans and new readers alike angry, I will cede this space to a part of the Foreword and the words of the editors. “It’s a place where the hero wins, the bad guy is punished, and the monsters are only real while you’re reading the story. You can close the covers and be safe. Unlike the real terrors of the world online and in the news lately…welcome to a collection of stories where you can find hope, happy endings, loyalty, freedom, love, all the positive things that make the best of us. Welcome to thrilling adventures and a modern take on two-fisted adventure stories…Have faith in yourself, in the people who love you, in magic, in religion, in Deity, in science, and in things harder to label with just one word. Believe that there will be smiles after the tears, joy after the pain, and that it will all work out, that good will triumph and evil will not win forever…You’re holding people’s dreams in your hands, dreams made real for you to read and share. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.” Laurell K Hamilton “Laurell is a big proponent of people doing their therapy and working through their shit. We sat over lunch and talked about the depressing stories that seemed to be everywhere, in the news and in fiction, and lamented that there weren’t more uplifting stories… Laurell and I are both survivors and we know that the world is not all unicorns, rainbows, and glitter. but we also know that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that the darkness can be pushed back, even if it starts with a spark….I hope that in this book you find a story that speaks to you that reminds you that tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities.” William McCaskey Believe again. Dream again. Know that you have the power to do the impossible and conquer your demons. Start a new relationship with favorite authors and new voices. Start here.
I am a reader. The thought of going without my books is inconceivable. For the most part, I have my favorites, books that are a comfort no matter what my life throws at me. When I was little, the books were something I needed. I travelled with a copy of “Little Women”. Jo and Beth, Meg and Amy were very real to me. I read that book until it literally fell apart – but it did not matter since they became a part of my brain. I know that they came from another persons brain. I know how much they meant to me. But it wasn’t just them. It was Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking and Cutter and Leetah. It was Amelia Bedelia and Bedknobs and Broomsticks and a magical doorway to Narnia that kept my imagination in thrall. It was the thought of Tesseracts and the pagentry of fantasy novels and the words of a bard. Its the words of Elizabeth Dickinson and the words of Keats. And, slowly, it became what was the fabric of my life. The threads I can remember, as well as the ones that I didn’t incorporate into my world view.
As an adult, I read everything and found myself finding more companions. Around other things that happened in the real world, there too were the characters of Anne Rice, Nora Roberts and Guy Gavriel Kay. And something amazing came from the books. It was friends who were only a few pages away. They were never too busy. It was the knowledge that, just by reading a book 📖, I could recapture where I was when I read it the first time as well as some of the minutia I had missed the first time around because I wanted to know what happened. Knowing what happened meant I could pay more attention to the characters that were secondary. And, there were times in my adult life when I had to read those treasured pages one word at a time. It was harder that way.
All of this was a little bit away from my main point. I said I was a reader and I am. It means that I escape into those other worlds and learn the rules… Whether it is based on mythology or vampires, society or shapeshifters it gave me an escape and a place to hope and dream about, while my body betrayed me. I also, somewhere along the way, developed a rule that if I started a book, I finished it. And, then, I found myself feeling a drive to finish a series, even if it wasn’t up to my standards. But, I started this blog to highlight one of my favorite authors and the two heroines of her novels. Karen Chance reminded me why she held a place among my favorites with Dragon’s Claw. It’s the latest release of the Dorina Basarab plot line which is a companion to the Cassandra Palmer series. I realized that I had missed Dory and Marlowe. And, reading it, I felt that excitement that comes from a new adventure and some old friends. I cannot wait for the next story.
See, the universe does supply answers. Sometimes not the one we want but the one we need. Since the blow ups are still occuring in my family of origin (come on, who in my life is surprised at that one… Hmm no takers, wait nope that person just had an itch…) And the “bugaboos” (that is a made up word. If anyone out there uses that word for anything or is offended at it because it sounds like a word they have heard anywhere-that is not the use of this word and I CAN definitively say, as the person who created the word and owns the rights to it… STOP USING A WORD I CREATED if you are using it wrong. Down the rabbit hole we go… A Bugaboo is an issue that scares you or makes you uncomfortable after a situation has happened that in some way damaged you. It is like the ghost of Christmas past but instead of being Christmas it the ghost of… That inner child! Yay, new connection made!) Are now being multiplied left and right kinda like gremlins. Remember those? No too young for that? Ok furbys. Ah yes light dawns in a whole generation of people. When did I become a responsible adult? Ah, yes, that pesky thing called marriage. And when did it really hit home that I was IT as far as adults go? That would be when singing the shma and watching the light go out of my soul mates eyes… But when did it really break through? No one is asking, and this right here is what is so dangerous about the Internet. We forget what we are writing goes far and wide. That someone can twist our words to say whatever they want. And thus there are twitter wars and people who are famous for being famous telling us what to drink eat wear. Etc. But there to is the fun part. Remember the days where if you loved a celebrity you would send a hand written letter written over a period of days, edited over and over and a clean copy (without erasures or white out) would go to the celebrity. Two weeks or so later you would get something in the mail with a form letter and a small thing (a boomark, a headshot, etc). Now, you get to interact with authors and all the fans. Rather then a cold weekend trying to LARP we have people who role play online. Some of those are author approved and even the ones that aren’t allow us to interact with characters that started in someone else’s head. Isn’t that great? And we can connect with the authors who create our favorite universes. Have a question, ask the writer and if you are lucky get an answer. And it’s amazing how many times fans argue about a definitive answer from an author. We take it for granted that we can reach out and connect with someone. It’s amazing when you look at how far we have come. I remember when the Disney Channel started along with Nickelodeon. Now, if we can’t see our show on TV, there are instantaneous uploads. What a magnificent world we live in.
Ok, so I feel the need to speak up. I don’t know whether or not what I am seeing on facebook is a collaboration between google Microsoft apple and facebook. I don’t know if I am only seeing the posts of people in my sphere ir not, and none of us ever thought about what would happen in the last 20-30 years. When Disney started a TV channel of was controversial too. I don’t know that we need to be fermenting dissent. And none of us ever thought that the Internet was anything but a geekdom. So, this is what happens. Instead of lamenting our unintended consequences why don’t we look ar how far we have come since the 1940s. I choose to believe in people, in g-d and the fact that no matter what we will be ok. Maybe I am wrong. My world has personally been shattered twice by the pivotal losses of the two men of my life. Dad 32 days before the big wedding we’d been arguing over every tiny detail of for 18 months. And Jerome 10 years ago. I guess I didn’t learn enough from the first loss. But I firmly believe in the soul and G-d and that we will all see each other again. But I believe Jerome and my dad are with my girls because that’s where their heart is. And yes I may be more Anita blake then Belle but oh, the beasts library. Why are their laptops we can carry in our pockets? Because we were tired of carrying our full towers to gaming tournamwbts. None of us thought about how we would get to our future bit just put it… Someday after most everyone dies. But I want to be the heroine of my story. Full stop. And somehow I ended up in a place where I am a stereotype… Why? Because I am a book nerd. I read the originals and all the new copies so I know how bad things can get. But they also have come so far… So, if my friends who are freaking out will breathe for a minute the oxygen will calm you down. That’s the way your brain works and as we go farther and farther with cars that can drive themselves and complete access almost instantly to authors, actors, everything. Read the in death series by Nora Roberts as JD ROBB. We will get there , maybe. Or jt ellison and know true fear. Fear of secrets, fear of natural disasters which can shatter you by taking those you love. Or just of being completely consumed. Why? Because throughout history we have had to revisit our fears. And this is life. Complicated… Messy and oh so amazing. So when your car tells you you aren’t paying attention that’s because reading in cars gives you headaches, so there are audiobooks. That explains it. And we bitch if its not exactly like the voice in our head. And seat belts and airbags… Shoot look at car seats. Why? Because we are worried about our kids- either because of evolution or something else. But does it really matter? Look around and ask yourself if its better now then it was. If not, do your best to fix it. Stand up to those who are evil because all it takes for the villain to win is good people to do nothing. But I read them all. Which led to a whole new category of writing. With people like me as authors. So keep speaking up and celebrate the happy that much harder for all the sorrow along the way… And those are the books that take me away. I love that Seanan McGuire writes books with Shakespeare quotes as titles. And, that is just too cool! And then there are the others and somehow my worlds of tech and science crossed with my geekiness my need to understand and brought me here to this weird intersection of space and time where I just have to say. We are better off, but I agree with all my authors that we have to speak up. It won’t be anyone’s cup of tea, but ok. I want nothing to do with 50 shades of grey… But my fantasy books… Now, you can pry those out of my cold dead hands. But every bad cloud has a sun behind it. It will pass. And you hold onto the good that much harder. Why? because it is tempered by steel. We had to so we did. And now we are doctors and lawyers and lawyers and its progress. Yes we have a way to go, but all of it it progress…
Happy Birthday Darynda Jones, author of the Charley Davidson series. Thank you for sharing Charley with us. We love her! And, of course, her leading man and all the characters in the series…
Working to make my way back to Serpentine since I read it all in one night and although I love it, its so hard not to wonder. But the great thing is that I have a backlog of books again. And I’m going from one to the next and even when it isn’t one of my primary loves that get waited, anticipated and speculated about (sorry for those I pester but I have a strong commitment not only to my favorite series but all the authors who create them) its still filled with snark and crazy literary s
For those of you who don’t start your day by checking there major paranormal authors blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook series pages, tumblr feeds and/or email lists and whom I have let down during my illness, I apologize.
Laurell K Hamilton’s Serpentine is announced for August 7, and given the long wait and the fact her posts on the blog seem to imply edits have been completed I’m pretty sure it will happen…
Katie MacAllister released the first book in a new series today with Fireborn and given that her books are always full of laughs and sarcasm, I cannot wait to get my hands on it… Oh and a Happy Book Birthday to her— may copies fly off the shelves and travel through the air with great speed to ereaders around the world allowing her to keep writing the books we readers adore…
i am an avid reader with you all know but i’m also usually a proponent of google play books because it’s easier in some ways to use an e book you always have it with you as long as you have a internet connection. so i have a question for you and you don’t have to answer it to me but answer it to yourself there have been many trips, where depending upon the duration, I had many issues with how I was going to pack clothes…around all the books. And come on be honest fellow bibliophiles, at least to yourself… You’ve had those conversations with yourself too. So, especially these days when we have to pay for luggage by the pound (seanan Mcguire wrote a great short story about a possible future where we even pay for our seats based on our weight) so for that reason alone ebooks are a g-dsend as we can now worry ourselves silly with how we will pack our clothes and all the stuff we buy on vacation as presents for other people or ourselves…
As for packing around our books, that is now reserved for comic conventions, when we are hoping to get the books signed by our favorite authors…
But for the first time in a long time I am finding myself wishing I could go back to, regular books because I’m having o troubleremembering the name of a series and if I had my old book collection I could just look the books until I found it. But now, I have only the vaguest of memories of and thousands of ebooks. So I find myself going through book covers on my eReader and 💭 thinking back with nostalgia on the days when I had an all paper library… Grass is always greener, right? So tell me what you guys think…
I find myself commiserating with authors as I am having trouble motivating myself to write reviews to keep up with my reading. I do have a few excuses though. One, Irma( maybe that should be my top ten) as I live in the destruction zone and though I was blessed to have relatively minor damage, getting back to normal has been a bitch and a half. But I did get a few seconds of fame
Two, I have been fighting off a staph infection that is a resilient fighter. That means not only do I have the infection making me feel awful but now I have antibiotics making me feel awful in ways the infection wasn’t.
So, I apologize. My intention is to make this post pretty small, but we will see where it goes. I have been reading and I will be working on reviews to post here. I am also now reviewing products from Amazon, so I am getting some really cool stuff for little to no cost! On a fixed income you gotta love every free thing you can legally get…
But back to the point. I recently watched a great show called somewhere between. It was beyond excellent and I highly recommend it…
“She’d called him a coward, running away whenever she pulled him toward something he didn’t like. It was not so much cowardice as ego, and not even so much protecting his ego as safeguarding the supports that kept it intact. Success bolstered his ego. Doing what he was good at and avoiding failure in every possible way. He’d first realized that in high school, when he’d dropped out of geometry, not because he disliked it but because he wasn’t good at it. Algebra came easily. Calculus was also fine. But there was something about geometry that he could not wrap his mind around. So he dropped the course. The moment he discovered he did not have the knack for something, he stopped trying to do it. Empathy, friendship, dating, relationships in general. He embraced a challenge only if he knew he could succeed. The hard truth of the matter was that Gabriel was spoiled. He got what he wanted, and did not want what he could not get. “ Kelley Armstrong Rituals
I am thoroughly enjoying my quest through Cainsville this time around. It never ceases to amaze me that every time I read one of my favorite authors my mind finds little parts of the story to delight over. The plot of each novel, for the most part remains the plot. There are a few slight deviations from that rule where knowing the plot in its entirety changes the substance of the story. This happens with Christine Feehan’s Carpathian series, when the overarching hatred between mages and the Carpathians leads to the discovery that their lack of fertility comes from an evil wizard’s working of a spell. It definitely happens in Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series. I think it is beginning to happen in the Anita Blake Series as we see more challenging foes as well as more powerful allies.
Sometimes, I find myself amazed though how much knowing one of the larger series in paranormal romance leads to the calm acceptance (to some extent) of fantastical creatures from myth and lore. One of the things I have greatly enjoyed in the Cainsville series is the interweaving of some pretty obscure Celtic imagery, characters and lore. Would the imagery of the Wild Hunt as a biker gang be so easily accepted had it not sort of appeared that way in the Dresden files? And now, Kelley Armstrong has introduced the slaugh which plays a large role in Laurell K Hamilton’s Meredith gentry Series. This Slaugh is a very different incarnation from the one in Merry Gentry’s world, but the idea itself is more easily accepted since it plays such a large role in Merry’s world.
I guess that the point of this general ramble is that everything is connected and , no I am not going into deep philosophical questions of identity or politics. I am just remarking upon the fact that so many have before–everything is possible and yet nothing can ever truly be new. And now I go back to Cainsville a little bit sad because I know the end is near but a little bit happy to as I never know quite what to expect until a story actually reaches its end.
Rituals
Kelley Armstrong
Fiction
Random House Canada
August 15, 2017
496
The fifth book and the exciting conclusion to bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's "impossible-to-put-down" Cainsville series, in which she mixes hard-hitting crime writing with phenomenal world-building to create a brand of fiction all her own. When Olivia Taylor-Jones found out she was not actually the adopted child of a privileged Chicago family but of a notorious pair of convicted serial killers, her life exploded. Running from the fall-out, she found a refuge in the secluded but oddly welcoming town of Cainsville, Illinois, but she couldn't resist trying to dig out the truth about her birth parents' crimes. She began working with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful criminal lawyer who also had links to the town; their investigation soon revealed Celtic mysteries at work in Cainsville, and also entangled Olivia in a tense love triangle with the calculating Gabriel and her charming biker boyfriend, Ricky. Worse, troubling visions revealed to Olivia that the three of them were reenacting an ancient drama pitting the elders of Cainsville against the mysterious Huntsmen with Olivia as the prize. In the series' fifth and final novel, not only does Gabriel's drug addict mother, who he thought was dead, make a surprise reappearance, but Kelley Armstrong delivers a final scary and surprising knock-out twist. It turns out a third supernatural force has been at work all along, a dark and malevolent entity that has had its eye on Olivia since she was a baby and wants to win at any cost.
