Tag: heroes

Seanan McGuire “Imaginary Numbers”

Everybody hurts and is hurt, in a grand cycle of being alive. But minimizing the damage . . . that matters.
In math, something is either true or it’s not. Something either works or it doesn’t. If something works and it feels like that shouldn’t be possible, it’s not the math that’s wrong: it’s your model of the universe. Mathematics is the art of refining our understanding of reality itself, like a sculptor trimming down a brick of marble until it frees the beautiful image inside.
How can anyone who truly loves numbers be irredeemable?
Life is complicated. The equations balance, in the end, but they can be so damn cold on the way to getting there.
I could feel the endless loops of recursive numbers trying to intrude on my thoughts, to pull me down into the comforting safety of pure mathematics, where I could be safe and comfortable and—most of all—protected. The numbers would protect me even as the world ate me alive
Five years. I’d lost five years with my family, and no matter how much they’d tried to keep me updated, I’d always known there would be things they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain to me until I was feeling well enough to come home. Things like Annie discovering she could pull fire out of the air. Big things. Things that changed everything around them, like any new variable introduced to a formerly stable equation.
The change stung. Elsie and I had never been particularly close—not like Artie and me, or Annie and me; the nerds of our generation, closing ranks against the people who didn’t understand—but she’d never looked at me like I was someone she needed to protect before
Being weird is, like, ninety percent of my day,” said Annie. She raised both hands, palms once again turned upward
He’d been dreaming of real roots, a home he could design and defend, since he was a little boy. After he met Evie and realized it was time to settle down, he’d set about making his dreams a reality. A house, isolated from the nearest human communities, big enough to host not only his immediate family, but every other living relative and maybe a dozen extras. Outbuildings and barns and fences and floodlights. Everything your average small militia needs to feel like they’re not going to be crushed under the heel of “the Man,” only in this case the militia was more like a wildlife conservation convention, and “the Man” was the Covenant of St. George.
You’re family, silly. You don’t thank us for welcoming you home. You thank us for letting you settle in before we put you on the chore rotation.”
Houses designed by eccentric cryptozoologists who grew up with a traveling carnival are rare, and they all have one trait in common: they’re idiosyncratic at best, and seriously weird at worst. The family compound fell into the “seriously weird” category. The front door opened, not on a foyer or stairway or other reasonable architectural choice, but on the mudroom connected to the kitchen, on the theory that the kitchen had a lot of flat, relatively sterile surfaces, and most people would either need hot water or food when they got to the house, depending on how injured they were. And as a theory it wasn’t wrong. It was just strange
Trust the numbers. The numbers don’t lie. Even if everything else in the world is trying to deceive you, the numbers will always, always tell the truth.” —Angela Baker
I would have thought he was handsome no matter what he looked like, because I really was in love with his mind—his weird, sweet, comforting mind—but Artie’s brain knew how to process human faces and I was inside his head and that meant that for right now, I could do the same thing. And he had a nice face, sweet and open and expressive. I spared a moment’s resentment for the fact that I belonged to a species that didn’t get to enjoy faces like his, because we simply didn’t see them. It wasn’t fair.
Then I usually think that no dimension is awful enough to deserve us, and I’m glad to at least be in a world where the Internet exists. Telepaths would never have invented the Internet.
I was broken. I made them keep you away because I was broken, and I was trying to put myself back together without any sort of map or instruction manual, and I knew if you saw me—if you, specifically, saw me—and turned away because I was too broken to care about anymore, I’d give up. I’d stop trying to repair myself.
Some people are good at music. Some people are good at sports. Some people are good at both. People are people, and every person has their own strengths and weaknesses. Biology is just one aspect of the greater whole.” —Jane Harrington-Price
Annie had been icing her knuckles, jaw set in the stubborn thrust that meant she had looked at the world, considered her options, and decided everyone else was in the wrong
Aunt Jane drove the sort of solid, sensible, mid-sized minivan beloved by soccer moms and field biologists the world over. She could pack literally hundreds of pounds of specimens into that thing, concealing them all in brightly colored plastic tubs labeled things like “PTA supplies” and “recycling.” I’ve seen her get pulled over, produce a plate of fresh peppermint brownies seemingly out of thin air, and charm the police into waving her on her way. She calls it her “weaponized white woman” routine, and it’s a calculated ruse she’s taken everywhere from cryptid extraction runs to political protests, where she spends a lot of time putting herself between the authorities and anyone she deems to be more vulnerable. Which is everyone.
My Aunt Jane loves me. I sometimes think she doesn’t want to, but there’s no questioning her affection. I’m part of her family. More importantly, I’m her reclusive son’s best friend. And none of that matters, because she grew up surrounded by people who not only knew what cuckoos were, they knew precisely why we shouldn’t be—couldn’t be—trusted. We’re natural predators who prefer the simplicity of a hunt where everyone involved is sapient. We destroy things for fun. She wasn’t the Price sibling who’d married a cuckoo’s daughter and been forced to admit that maybe there was more to us than a knife in the dark and a mind twisting inward on itself. She could love and fear and hate me all at the same time.
Nobody gets to pick where they’re born or who they’re born to, but everybody gets to pick their family. Make good choices with yours.” —Alice Healy
Life happens. So does death. The trick is putting as much time as possible between the two.”
There’s nothing like a cryptozoologist when there’s something to be taken apart. It’s basically Christmas morning for them, and when they have the opportunity to wallow in it, they really wallow. Evie and Kevin would be joining them once they were sure I was There’s nothing like a cryptozoologist when there’s something to be taken apart. It’s basically Christmas morning for them, and when they have the opportunity to wallow in it, they really wallow. Evie and Kevin would be joining them once they were sure I was safely in for the night. I could hear Kevin thinking distantly of all the tests he wanted to run on the dead cuckoo’s tissues
I think ‘a lot’ may be the most charitable description of this family,” said James, with a dour chuckle. “When Annie informed me that I was being adopted, I thought she was being fanciful. And then she got me back here, and I found myself with a bedroom, a space on the chore chart, and an offer of a new identity if I wanted to actually become a Price, rather than carrying my father’s name around with me all the time. I’m still mulling that last one over. It’s tempting.”
Mom says that when Kevin and Evie got married, Grandma Alice actually tried to break up the wedding. I don’t mean ‘disrupt’—although she did that, too—I mean break. She didn’t like cuckoos, which is understandable. We’re hard to like.” She still didn’t like most cuckoos or trust them as far as she could throw them. As a species, we’re dangerous.
Annie and Verity are way better superheroes than I am. They actually work for what they can do. When we were kids, Verity was never around, because she was always going to another dance lesson. And Annie spent half her time on the balance beam or the trapeze rig. I’m a freak of nature. They’re amazing.”
Never go anywhere unprepared, unarmed, or unaccompanied. The difference between success and suicide is often a matter of prior planning.” —Evelyn Baker
Didn’t think I’d ever have a family. Didn’t think I’d ever want one. It’s funny, how much a person can change without even noticing what’s happening.” —Frances Brown
Math is the underpinning force of the universe. That’s something people don’t always understand when I try to explain it to them, and it’s so basic—so primal and perfect—that I don’t have the words to make it any clearer. How do you explain air to a bird, or water to a fish? There’s no explaining things that simply are. That’s how I feel about math. Math is everywhere. Math is everything. Even the seemingly effortless, uncomplicated things like walking and breathing and, yes, telepathy, they’re all math.The other cuckoo’s mental shields were made of instinctive equations, so tightly knotted together that they seemed like a single continuous piece. They weren’t, though. An equation that large would be clumsy, awkward . . . slow. Her shields were fast and adaptive because they were built like a living thing, with numbers in the place of single cells. Where there’s an equation, there’s an answer. I cocked my head in imitation of her earlier gesture, picking at the wall until it all came into sudden, perfect focus. I wrapped the answer to her equations in a soft shell of my intentions and lobbed it at the shields. They went down all at once, a cascade of falling defenses. The whole process had taken only a few seconds. Back in the real world, outside our minds, the other cuckoo gasped, hand clutching at her swollen belly. The last of the shields fell. I looked at her levelly.
“No matter how much we learn, there’s always something we don’t know. A map labeled ‘here be monsters’ is better than one that reads ‘we have no idea.’” —Thomas Price
According to Mom, cuckoos are biologically more like really big wasps than they are like monkeys—hominids but not primates, in other words. So, yeah, there was probably an evolutionary stage way back in Sarah’s family tree where she would have gone through molts. But I tried not to think about that too hard
When all else fails, orange soda and toast. Even at two in the morning, orange soda and toast. They can cure many ills, and if they can’t fix the problem, at least you won’t be hungry and groggy anymore
Sometimes I hate being right. I walked over and sat down across from her at the table, deciding to skip my toast for now. Toast is for people who don’t feel like they’re about to throw up. “It’s a biology thing. It means the growth stage insects go through between molts. It’s metamorphic—they tend to change shapes and stuff—but I don’t really understand it”
We come from a family of biologists. One way or another, we’ve been exposed to more science lessons than those poor kids on the Magic School Bus. But you know what I’ve never studied voluntarily? Bugs.” Elsie shook her head. “I don’t like bugs. They’re weird and they’re creepy and they have too many legs. They skitter. I am not a skittery person.
Being a Price means spending your life preparing for an emergency you hope won’t ever come. Elsie and I aren’t as physical as our cousins—we can’t be, not when our blood tends to make people fall in love with us—but that doesn’t mean we got out of the basic training. I grabbed clothes and yanked them on before picking up the bug-out bag that leaned against my desk and slinging it over my shoulder. Inside I had medical supplies, rope, a flashlight, batteries, water, a compass—all the low-tech answers to low-tech problems. Well, most of the low-tech answers.
“Friends don’t hold their friends at gunpoint.” “What the fuck is this, an episode of Mr. Rogers? Grab him!”
Thankfully, while we all come from the Spider-Man school of combat—the bad guys can’t hit you if they’re too busy trying to figure out what the hell you’re talking about—my parents had always been very clear that there was a time and a place for helping your enemies improve. The middle of combat was neither of those things.
Annie’s smile was more like a snarl. In that moment, it was easy to see why she was Sam’s perfect girl, even if I would have sooner gotten involved with a live wolverine even if we hadn’t been related. She was way too scary for me.
It’s not paranoia when you find an actual cuckoo in your living room.
“Your sister should be done patching up the hole in your dad by now. Oh, and did you know my dad’s bi?” “I did not know that and I did not want to know that and why do you know that?” She shrugged. “He made a pass at your dad when he started bleeding.”
WhEN I WAS A kid, I’d thought everyone had a barn filled with taxidermy and weird, wonderful tools, like a mad scientist’s lab crossed with a veterinarian’s office.
“Yes, because you’re not twice my age, related to me, and capable of making me stupid with lust just by flexing a bicep.” Annie holstered her gun and moved to help Sam strap Heloise down. “Okay, maybe that last one applies, but it’s not creepy because you’re not my uncle.”
even when you’re talking to people you’re probably about to kill. Maybe especially when you’re talking to people you’re probably about to kill. That way they get to the afterlife with an accurate idea of what took them out.”
Her hand moved in a complicated pattern, and she was suddenly holding an actual fireball. It flickered orange and red and blue, looking strangely like a pom-pom from her cheerleading days, if the pom-poms had been actively terrifying.
We’ve never been chill,” she continued, still filing. “Chill doesn’t save anybody. We like saving people. The ones who can be saved, anyway. Some of them were always beyond salvation.” She blew on her nails. “Those ones, we bury in the woods.”
You heard me.” His eyes flashed white again. “Everyone knows about you. The Prices. The Healys. You were the first people to figure out that we existed, and keep knowing that we existed, even when we tried to make you forget. It’s because of you that this world has turned dangerous for us.” He paused to chuckle, darkly. “Well. Because of you, and because of video surveillance. We can change a mind, but we can’t change a camera. Another few years and this whole world is going to be like London. Too filmed to risk. Still, we might have held out a few more decades if it weren’t for you people screwing everything up for us. So I’m asking you, how much do you know? I need to know where to start.”
“People feel smart when they tell you ‘Frankenstein’ was the doctor, not the monster. They’re wrong. Frankenstein—Dr. Frankenstein—was always the monster. That’s the whole point. Sometimes evil is so damn beautiful it hurts.” —Martin Baker
“Everything is math,” he blurted. I blinked. So did everyone else. “That’s what my mother always says,” said Aunt Evie. “She says the universe is numerical in nature, so the better a mathematician someone is, the closer they draw to the divine. It’s why she became an accountant. For her, that was like joining the priesthood.”
Exactly. Everything is math, and everything is made of math, and if you can manipulate the numbers, you can change the world. Literally change the world. You need to know the right equations, or you need the raw power to punch your way to the correct answer without taking the steps in the middle. But if you can accomplish one of those two things, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
Yes,” said Mark again. “But the equations are . . . they’re huge. They’re resource-intensive in a way that almost always results in the death of the person who completes them, and those are the ones we still have. There are pieces of the math missing. Whole sections that were wiped clean when our ancestors were put into exile
We know the original equations were beautiful and subtle and kind,” said Mark. “We know that when our ancestors were exiled, Johrlar survived. We know the equations could be performed over and over and over again.” “Yeah, because they were being performed by a whole bunch of people,” said Elsie. Everyone turned to look at her. She glanced up from her nails and shrugged. “What? You know I’m right. Look, you’re talking about math that’s so big that it kills people. Well, that’s what research teams are for. That’s what think tanks are for. If you have a spell that’s so resource-intensive it uses a sorcerer up, you get a whole bunch of sorcerers to come and cast it. If you have an equation that’s so resource-intensive it melts brains, you get a whole bunch of smart people to think about different pieces of it at the same time, so nobody’s brain gets melted. The equations aren’t meant to be a solo voyage. No big. Why are you telling us all this?”
found another way. A cruder way. It’s like a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. The equations we have, the ones we’ve developed, require a Queen to resolve them. Once she finishes her final morph and enters her fourth instar, she can do the math. She can find the right answers. And she can rip a hole in the fabric between dimensions, allowing us to move on.”
the ones who oppose us, we’re weird to the ones who stand with us, we’re heroes to the ones who depend on us. But there’s one thing that tends to get left out of the conversation, treated as less important than the need to keep fighting and keep winning until the war is over: We’re scientists. Mom and Uncle Kevin even more than Elsie and me. They’re the direct descendants of Thomas and Alice Price. They were raised to believe that the world can make sense, if they just try hard enough and refuse to stop poking at its soft bits. The cuckoos have been one of the greatest mysteries our family has ever encountered. We’d tried for years to learn more about their biology, without taking apart one of the two cuckoos we considered part of the family. To have one walk into our home and just start talking was, well . . .It was no wonder this was going so slowly. The people who would normally have hurried things along—the people we instinctively still listened to, thanks to their age and our familial relationship—were too enthralled by the potential to learn something to focus on what actually mattered.
If she survives the process, she’s not going to be a god, she’s going to be a Queen,” said Mark. “She’ll have the strength to do the math and put enough power behind it to blow this dimension to pieces. She’s going to smash this world like an eggshell. She’s going to open the way for the cuckoos to go somewhere else. If you don’t stop her, she’s going to destroy everything she’s ever cared about, and she’s going to destroy you in the process.”
There are losses we don’t move past, no matter how hard we try. Some wounds, once inflicted, bleed forever underneath the skin. All we can do is learn to live with them.” —Jonathan Healy
“You know, I gotta say, I’m really impressed with how terrible you people are,” said Mark. “I’ve been listening to Ingrid talk about her daughter the princess, and how she was going to make her a Queen and use her to destroy the world, for years. She never mentioned that the people raising her were genuinely awful. You hate us because we’re the competition, right?” “We hate you because you’re dangerous predators who murder innocent people and make things worse for absolutely everyone, but thanks for playing.”
“Sort of are,” said Elsie. “Sort of turned yourself into one when you decided that a bad haircut and a pair of yoga pants meant you could pretend to be our cousin without getting in trouble for it. Because your friend is right: we’re not good people. We can’t afford to be. We’re one side of a three-sided war, and you’re the enemy.”
My parents are going to kill me,” said Antimony. “Actual murder. Let’s really enjoy this little rescue mission, because it’s the last one I’m ever going to go on.” She was sitting in the middle, one leg slung over Sam’s to make the footwell less crowded. Sam snorted. “Your parents are going to be arguing about how they’re supposed to handle this until the sun comes up. We’ll be home and making waffles by then.”
“I know this is only confusing because I can’t read your mind, but your parents aren’t actually going to kill you, are they?” asked Mark. “If they are, I say again, absolutely terrible people. How you got a reputation for being the good guys, I may never know.” “We have a good propaganda arm,” I said. “You mentioned your parents before. I thought all cuckoos killed their parents when they hit puberty.”
You know how I don’t want to destroy the world and head off to terrorize a fresh dimension with the rest of my merry band of predators? Well, Cici is why. She’s my little sister. Cecilia. She’s a holy terror. Smart and funny and awful. Really, really awful. She might be as terrible as you. It’s hard for me to measure.” 
I woke up in the middle of the night with the knowledge and laws of my entire species filling my head, crowding out everything else, making it almost impossible for me to breathe. I was fifteen. Cici was four. I thought she’d probably scream and wake our parents, so I knew I had to kill her first if I wanted it to be easy. It mattered that it be easy. I didn’t want to upset her. That’s probably when I should have realized something was wrong, when I was thinking ‘I don’t want to upset my sister’ and ‘I’m going to murder her’ at the same time, but I was fifteen and I was being eaten alive by memories that weren’t mine, so I think I did okay, all things considered. I got a knife. I went to her room
I helped Ingrid, who, please remember, is Sarah’s biological mother, lure her away from you. I’m not saying I didn’t. She knows where I live. She knows where my family lives. I have no real desire to be at war with you—you are all terrible, terrifying people—but I wasn’t going to risk Cici’s life because your cousin was somehow more important than she is. She’s not. I did what I was told, I escaped as soon as I could, and now I’m helping you. Be grateful for that part. I could have told Ingrid about the hum. I could have sided with my hive against humanity. I’m not, because I love my sister. Take the fucking win.”
Breathe, baby, breathe. You breathe and you keep on breathing. That’s the only thing I’m going to ask of you today. You just keep on breathing.” —Enid Healy
Or maybe this was like a holodeck in Star Trek, and I could start calling people out of my memories of them, using them for company, for stability, for a way to keep myself from doing what the cuckoos wanted from me. Because if there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that doing what the cuckoos wanted wasn’t going to end well. Not for anyone.
Math, though . . . math never changed. Math always meant exactly what it said, no more and no less, and refused to be written for anyone. Math was always math. If I turned myself into numbers, I would be a wholly unique equation, something so much bigger and wilder and harder to define than “Sarah.” I looked at the screen again. I put my fingers on the keys
normally I wouldn’t bother you while you were undermining the fabric of the universe with mathematics, but you do understand that this is bad, right? Numbers shouldn’t be sufficient to change the laws of physics. They should sit quietly and think about what they’ve done until it’s time for someone to figure out the tip
There’s a moment where everything comes together, where the numbers add up and everything is perfect, and nothing hurts. That’s the best moment of them all. A person could spend their whole life chasing after it, and never feel their time was wasted.” —Angela Baker
I had been so foolish. I had been so stupid. This was . . . this was everything. The equation sang to me, bright and beguiling, begging to be completed. Begging to be carried out into the world and allowed to come to sweet fruition. All I had to do was wake up. All I had to do was open my eyes, and the work—the great work, the work that I had been moving toward since the moment of my birth, the work that had always been destined to be mine—would finally begin
When it’s a choice between saving your family and saving the world, I can’t tell you what to decide. I can only tell you that, no matter what you choose, part of you will always know that you were wrong.” —Alexander Healy
You know, sometimes I wonder what our family looks like from the outside.”
Dad both leapt to their feet, Mom’s hands suddenly bristling with knives, Dad producing a handgun from somewhere inside his jacket. I couldn’t see what Elsie was doing, but I had no doubt that it was impressive, possibly involving the weaponization of a grilled cheese panini.
Some prices are far too dear. And yet we pay them anyway.” —Jonathan Healy
Not dying at all would have been better—way better—but I guess I always knew that we couldn’t win forever. That’s not how the universe works. Sooner or later everyone has to lose. Even the good guys.
Annie!” I shouted. “I need you over here!” A gun went off. “Little busy!” she shouted back. “Don’t care!” We had a lot of code phrases for moments like this one, where we needed to communicate without tipping our hands.
No one with a larynx enjoys being punched in the throat. That’s just science.
I might be able to turn the tide from “probably fatal” to “eh, you’ll walk away from it.” Any combat you can walk away from is a good combat, regardless of what’s been done to the other guy.
But that’s what people are, really. We’re equations that have grown large enough and complex enough to have opinions about the world. To want to change it.
When working complex math, there are factors that can be used to cancel things out
any of the professors I’ve ever talked to would roll their eyes and scoff at the idea of explaining things that way, but it works, it works, it takes the weight out of the final figures, and I needed to cancel as much of this world-breaking equation as I possibly could.

No one’s ever really lost. Sometimes we don’t know where they are, exactly, but that just means it’s time for us to go out and find them.” —Alice HealyI didn’t even need to check to know that I was tied in place. There was no other way I could have stayed upright—and family protocols are very clear. When you have someone captive and you want them to stay that way, you damn well tie them up. We were in some kind of classroom. 
FOLLOW THE LADY
I was always voted the least likely of my generation to fall in love or settle down—and that includes my cousin Artie the incubus, who seems destined to die alone in the basement of his parents’ house, thanks to a near-pathological fear of getting close to any girl he’s not related to
Sometimes being a cryptozoologist is even more complicated than it ought to be.
We lost Grandpa. Not to death, which would have been understandable and ordinary and something we might have been able to collectively get over. No, I mean we lost him, through a hole in the wall of the world that swallowed him down in the middle of the night while Grandma Alice was pregnant with my Aunt Jane, whose impending arrival was the only thing that prevented Grandma from immediately jumping into the hole and going after him. As soon as she’d recovered from labor, she’d dumped both her children on our Aunt Laura, yet another in the string of aunts, uncles, and cousins who aren’t actually biologically related to us.
Buckley Township, Michigan, is one of those places that gets talked about in hushed tones whenever there’s a census, a place where people die young and weirdly.
The laws of physics are not invited to a lot of sylph parties, nor would they attend if they were.
The laws of physics are not invited to a lot of sylph parties, nor would they attend if they were.
No one in our family is in poor physical condition. We’ve been lucky when it comes to illnesses and injuries, and all of us, even Alex, have chosen extracurricular activities that keep us in excellent physical shape. And then there is my grandmother. She’s been moving between dimensions for decades, trying to locate her missing husband, doing a lot of God-knows-what to keep her stomach full and her guns loaded during that time—and honestly, I don’t think she puts a priority on food.

Whatever function of her dimensional wanderings kept her young, it also left her occasionally bewildered about her own life and family, unable to keep straight whether something had happened to my sister or her mother. It made our relatively rare family dinners exciting.

Kelley Armstrong’s Alone in the Wild (rockton 5)

I will start this off with a few caveats: I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in return for this review AND I am a Kelley Armstrong fan.  I have been a fan from the first time I was introduced to her in Bitten, and have followed her bodies of work avidly since then.  One of the things I love about her body of work is that she has a vision.  She stays true to that vision even when fans criticize her for it.  Sometimes, the vision isn’t immediately apparent but it is always there.  She also has a number of compelling stand alone novels that are unique and compelling.
I have greatly enjoyed the Rockton series and I was one of those who read the first book in installments.  The premise is unique and it seems like there are many ways for the story to advance over time.  I didn’t see that at the beginning, but now I do.  I have to say that once again Kelley Armstrong has delivered a compelling series with well rounded characters that will appeal to readers.    These multifaceted characters defy classification as heroes or villains.  It highlights the fact that everyone has both good and bad and must be evaluated on their own merits.  This is especially true of the residents of Rockton, where everyone is running from something.
I do not want to ruin any of the books by alluding to parts of the plot line that are spoilers for earlier books: so SPOILER ALERT (not for this book but for others in the Rockton series)!
When the series started, we followed Casey Duncan and her best friend Diana on the journey to Rockton a town in the Yukon that isn’t on any map.  It’s billed as a town for those who need to get away from something.  You have to cut off contact with everyone in your old life.  There will not be any contact once the decision to go is made.  A generic open end message will tell friends and loved ones that you will be out of touch and then you disappear when you get on the helicopter.  There can be no cellphones, no GPS, no email, not even an air-gapped computer.  The town itself is camouflaged by the terrain.  AND everything is controlled by the town; unless the council think it’s necessary you won’t be getting it.  Once you arrive you must contribute to the workings of the town.  Casey has a vital role as a homicide detective.  Even that is different in Rockton–there are no forensic teams to call.  Not having the internet to research forensics makes a large difference and there is no end to the challenges that Casey faces.  And getting used to life with less electricity isn’t a walk in the park either.
Once Casey arrived, she discovered there was a hidden underside to Rockton and to Diana who she thought she knew so well.  Turns out that Diana and her Abusive Ex-husband had stolen a large amount of money and that was why he kept turning up like a bad penny.  Being in a town without internet makes it easy for people to hide their true natures.  But all of that is another story, literally…so go read the first 4 books!
At the beginning of Alone in the Woods, Casey and Sheriff Eric Dalton are on a much needed vacation after all the truly daunting challenges they have faced in earlier.   Casey has had a steep learning curve sine she walked out to that helicopter so many moons ago.  But when Casey awakens alone in the camp with her Newfoundland puppy Storm and she hears what she thinks is a baby crying she doesn’t quite believe her ears.  When she finds a baby clutched to the chest of a murdered woman, it raises a number of issues.  The most immediate of which is that Rockton doesn’t admit children of any age.  Solving the mystery of how this baby came to be in the Yukon without any others in sight will be one of the toughest challenges Casey faces.  It will introduce a number of new characters into the world of Rockton.  And, seeing Sheriff Dalton with this newborn will cause Casey to face emotional pitfalls that surprise her and force both she and Eric to have a relationship talk Casey never thought to face.  Since I wholeheartedly hope you will read this book I will stop here.
I have enjoyed the journey with Rockton so far and I cannot wait to get my hands on book 6.  At the beginning, I was anxiously awaiting the next installment and I still am!  Seeing Casey settle into Rockton is a pleasure and seeing the world expand to include so many characters  reminds me of the early books of Otherworld.  Even more of a Kelley Armstrong fan even though this book kept me up all night!

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Laurell K Hamilton Blog Post Repost and a Few Thoughts of my Own

My husband’s family is an armed forces family.  His father was a marine and his mother in the army.  They met in the Armed Services band and as the lore goes, that was that. My husband was in Air Force ROTC and got a scholarship to college and wanted to be a pilot.  He got derailed by Calculus Four, but that is another story entirely… His little brother and sister were also in ROTC in high school, but chose different paths for their lives.

The first time I ever traveled with my children through an airport, I taught them that the men and women in armed services uniforms were special and that they fought for our country and deserved our gratitude–then I cringed as my two year old ran up to the marine, pulled on his dress uniform with sticky hands and then said “Thank You for saving my mommy”  to say he was surprised was an understatement.  After many apologies and smiles, we parted ways and I taught both my daughters that the correct phrase was “thank you for your service.”  And to this day I feel a sense of pride each time they politely thank the men and women in the armed services. ( and now cringe as they are pretty close in age to the youngest recruits at 14 and 15, and they get a little more attention than I’m necessarily comfortable with)

That being said, I am a fan of many writers who write detective stories and police procedurals.  And every time I hear about a police officer losing his or her life I cringe.  I have a few friends who ended up as police officers and I always call them when I have any issue that regards the police so I know how to best proceed.

Police officers and fire fighters come into our lives at the worst moments- either we are victims of crime or in the process of committing one.  But regardless, they run towards danger and do it every day all day.  So why didn’t I teach my daughters to thank them for their service?  Why did I teach my daughters that if they are ever pulled over to go to a public well lighted place before stopping?  Honestly, most police officers are a suspicious bunch and if you approach them out of the blue,  even to thank them for their service to thee community, I’ve found them to be a little wary about it.  I try to always nod at them and say thank you when I see them out and about and will redouble my efforts going forward.

So, I’m not sure exactly what my point was when I started other than that police officers and fire fighters don’t get nearly enough appreciation from the communities they serve.  Instead we point at the few bad apples and teach our children to be careful and that a uniform doesn’t necessarily mean a hero.

That being said, please give what you can to this fallen officers family and if you happen to see a police officer or fire fighter in the next few days thank them for their service.  And send positive thoughts and prayers to ALL the heroes in our communities.

 

 

Fallen Heroes

I look forward to discussing all of this with fellow fans at my site bestbooklover.net and at the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BestBooklovernet-336745780072074/

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Chloe Neill’s Blade Bound

I have to be completely honest here.  I just couldn’t see it.  I mean we all knew going into Blade Bound that it was going to be the last Chicagoland Vampires book.  And yet, how could we possibly say goodbye to Ethan and Merit, Jonah and the Red Guard, Mallory and Catcher or Gabriel and the North American pack?  And, as with so many of the books in this series, the villain seemed unbeatable and the craziness just plain off the charts.  We got to see a vampire wedding, a warning from Gabriel that the vampire child may not be coming and we all knew that we had not seen the end of Sorcha.

About halfway through the book, I started to get really scared though.  Ethan had already returned from death, much to all our surprise.  But I started to wonder if maybe the way this book ended the series was with everyone’s death or confinement.  And so it took me a while to wrap my head around finishing this book, come what may.  I had carefully avoided all reviews and spoilers while I wrapped my head around the fact that this ending was here.  But about halfway through, I had to have a little faith–in Chloe Neill and in myself.  I could take whatever came in the series.

I won’t spoil the ending.  But I will say that my faith paid off in ways unimaginable.  And that is the key to this whole series.  Despite being a jaded paranormal romance reader who thought she had seen everything, this series constantly came out of left field.  Consistently, we found ourselves wondering how all our heroes could possibly pull this one off.  And they always, somehow did.   It’s sad to be saying goodbye to our intrepid heroes but the series ended on a high note rather than disappointment.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I highly recommend this book, and the series itself.  It’s lighthearted and campy and unbelievable at times, but these characters will soon hold a piece of your heart, as they did mine!

 

I look forward to discussing all of this with fellow fans at my site bestbooklover.net and at the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BestBooklovernet-336745780072074/

If you want to help support this website, donations are accepted at paypal.me/Bestbooklover/






Blade Bound Book Cover




Blade Bound





Chloe Neill





Fiction




Penguin




2017




384



"Continuation of New York Times bestselling author Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vampires series"--

The thrilling final installment of Chloe Neill’s New York Times bestselling urban fantasy series sees sinister sorcery advancing across Chicago, and it might usher in the fall of Cadogan House....
 

Since the night of her brutal attack and unwilling transformation into a vampire, Merit has stood as Sentinel and protector of Chicago’s Cadogan House. She’s saved the Windy City from the forces of darkness time and again with her liege and lover, Ethan Sullivan, by her side.

When the House is infiltrated and Merit is attacked by a vampire who seems to be under the sway of dark magic, Merit and Ethan realize the danger is closer than they could have imagined. As malign sorcery spreads throughout the city, Merit must go to war against supernatural powers beyond her comprehension. It is her last chance to save everything—and everyone—she loves.

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Netflix led me to compare … Gilmore Girls versus Good Witch

So, of late I have been watching a lot of netflix.  I usually don’t because I’m reading or rereading something.  And as a book addict, well I sort of agree with all book nerds that the best things lie between the covers, movies never live up to the original form and TV is a form of the deliberate dumbing down of America.  So when I found myself sick and reading was too much effort-I started watching netflix shows (on my 13 year olds netflix account).  Once I got past the shock of some of the shows I didn’t know she was watching, I started looking at shows for me.  And I found myself watching “Good Witch” from the Hallmark Channel.  It’s a plucky story of a widowed mom who lives in a quirky town with her 15 year old daughter and her two older stepchildren who are out of the house.  Catherine Bell is a witch in this small town who decides to open her home as a Bed and Breakfast.  As I watched episode after episode of this show I realized it’s a sanitized version of the Gilmore Girls.  Instead of sarcastic wit and insane townspeople, we have magic feelings and sappy story lines.  No one is having sex, but we have a lot of townspeople working together to bring bizarre festivals to life.  And I realized that this dichotomy is one we are facing in everything today.  Instead of sarcastic banter we have vitriol.  Instead of challenging plot lines we have super heroes.  And instead of leaving each episode of a favorite TV show feeling a little bit guilty for enjoying all the pop culture banter and the snarky commentary of Lorelai and Rory–we have this empty feeling as though that’s an hour we will never get back…

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World Book Day

Happy world book day!  Take a moment to thank your favorite authors for working so hard throughout the year to bring us wonderful worlds to visit and strong heroes and heroines!   @LKHamilton @AuthorCFeehan @Jennifer_Estep @seananmcguire @laurendane @shilohwalker @VickiPettersson @JRWard1 @kenyonsherrilyn @diannalove @NoraRoberts @JayminEve1 @karenchance @KelleyArmstrong @KFBreene @debradunbar Jt ELLISON @LarissaIone @lara_adrian @kresleycole @LarissaIone @pccastauthor @KCastAuthor @jacquelinecarey @RichelleMead @rachelcaine @Darynda @YasmineGalenorn @JCareyAuthor @shilohwalker @jennablack @ShannonMayer @KendraElliot, @MelindaLeigh, @PCornwellFans @1pcornwell @WendyPiniMasque @wendyandrichardpini, @SarahFine, @amylane , @CarrieVaughan1 @marjoriemliu , @kelleygay @KellyKeaton @elfquest @skyewarren2381 @meredithwild @chloeneill , @JanieneFrost, @christinewarre , @katiemacalister, @NaliniSingh @wildmeredith, @GenaShowalter, @AmyLane, @Karen Chance @LaurenDane

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oylmpians:

moodboard: valkyries

↦ In Norse mythology, a valkyrie (from Old Norse valkyrja “chooser of the slain”) is a host of female figures who choose those who may die in battle and those who may live. Selecting among half of those who die in battle (the other half go to the goddess Freyja’s afterlife field Fólkvangr), the valkyries bring their chosen to the afterlife hall of the slain, Valhalla, ruled over by the god Odin. Valkyries also appear as lovers of heroes and other mortals, where they are sometimes described as the daughters of royalty, sometimes accompanied by ravens and sometimes connected to swans or horses.

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nataliaillustration:

We are strong 
Women are heroes!

#InternationalWomensDay #Overwatch #gaming #womensday2017

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