Vulnerable is a great story that is easy to relate with and emotionally resonant. Cory Kirkpatrick is a regular California girl struggling to make it out of her Northern California hometown. She is smart, and works hard to get her Associates degree so she can then transfer to get her Bachelors. Like so many young women, she is afraid of being trapped in her hometown and bitter. She is already a little bit of a rebel, with lots of piercings and a tough girl exterior. She works at the local gas station on the overnight shift, and is determined to make something of herself, no matter what everyone else says. One night, she looks up from studying and her world changes. She discovers that there is a whole other world in the hills where she grew up. One with magic, vampires, wereanimals and every other type of paranormal creature. This sends her on a journey of self-discovery and love. It stars with a vampire and from there she finds herself in a world where sensual and consentual is the rule. This book has graphic sex scenes with more than one partner. She struggles to throw off her old paradigm and accept this new one, in which she too has magic and worth. But an old enemy has come to threaten her new lovers, Lord Green, a high sidhe elf and Adrian, their vampire lover. Before all is said and done, Cory will realize that everyone is Vulnerable.
Vulnerable
Little Goddess
Amy Lane
Paranormal Romance
DSP Publications; 2 edition
e book
The story of Cory, a young woman trying to find her place in her world. In doing so, she meets various supernatural beings, and finds that her place is not necessarily where she thought it was, and home is where you make it
Working graveyards in a gas station seems a small price for Cory to pay to get her degree and get the hell out of her tiny town. She's terrified of disappearing into the aimless masses of the lost and the young who haunt her neck of the woods. Until the night she actually stops looking at her books and looks up. What awaits her is a world she has only read about—one filled with fantastical creatures that she's sure she could never be.
The great thing about Amy Lane’s Green Hill Series (Little Goddess Series) is that the world is always the same. We jump into the world we left at the end of Wounded. Cory has returned to the hill with her husband’s victorious over Goshawk and the fae of San Francisco, In order to achieve that victory, however, Green had to unify a large number of supernatural creatures over a much larger territory. Part of this was easy, as species-ism had run rampant throughout the supernatural world, and when Green offered them acceptance and a place to belong, many of them jumped at it. But this type of unification requires a bit of maintenance, and since Green’s magic leans towards sex…well Green has to cement these connections as quickly as possible. This leads to Green having to be away from the hill and Cory being in charge. Things are complicated. Bracken’s life depends on him being faithful to Cory and Nicky’s life depends on him having sex at least once a month with either Cory or Green. Cory is still struggling to understand how SHE ended up as everyone’s beloved. And she doesn’t know how to love Nicky when bonding him to her and Green was an accident. The Avians need to be housed outside the hill, or they too may end up in unintended matings.
On top of that something weird is happening to some of the supernatural creatures. They are acting like they are intoxicated, and then their blood is toxic. Add to this that Bracken has never shared well, Nicky is struggling with the fact he likes boys more than girls and Cory is trying to adjust and get her degree! Something bad is after Cory and no one know how its going to play out…
Also, Grace’s daughter Chloe has discovered that her mother is still alive, sort of. And she and her two sons are trying to find a way to fit in at the hill, but Chloe’s bitterness towards Grace is truly toxic. And she has focused her hatred on Cory, who she feels has stolen her mother…
Wounded, Volume 1
Little Goddess
Amy Lane
Paranormal Romance
DSP Publications; 2 edition
e book
Little Goddess: Book Three
Vol. 1
Humans have the option of separation, divorce, and heartbreak. For Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick, sorceress and queen of the vampires, the choices are limited to love or death. Now that she is back at Green’s Hill and assuming her duties as leader, her life is, at best, complicated. Bracken and Nicky are competing for her affections, Green is away taking care of his people, and a new supernatural enemy is threatening the sanctity of all she has come to love. Throw in a family reunion gone bad, a supernatural psychiatrist, and a killer physics class, and Cory’s life isn’t just complex, it’s psychotic.
Cory needs to get her act and her identity together, and soon, because the enemy she and her lovers are facing is a nightmare that doesn’t just kill people, it unmakes them. If she doesn’t figure out who she is and what her place is on Green’s Hill, it’s not just her life on the line. She knows from hard experience that the only thing worse than facing death is facing the death of someone she loves.
Loving people is easy—living with them is what takes the real work, and it’s even harder if you’re bound.
Cory is reeling from the loss of Adrian in book one. In an attempt to be what Green’s Hill needs, she goes to college and takes Renny with her. The thought is that the two of them can heal together and come back to the hill whole. Cory doesn’t want to be a burden on Green, and so even the sexual healings that Green excels at aren’t working. Then the unthinkable happens, and Cory is attacked by a new supernatural threat, and Green rushes to her side when he hears her psychic scream. A new shapeshifter is stealing women’s memories of their first times, which are so very vital to Cory, as those are her most precious memories of Adrian. While they investigate and try to find a way to get those memories back, they discover that the Supernatural community had some complicity in the attack that killed Adrian and the battle lines are drawn. Goshawk, the leader of the Avians has been attacking the supernatural community and has taken advantage of the schisms already present, since the elves have a sense of entitlement that is divisive. The vampires, shapeshifters (other than the Avians), and lesser fae join forces with Green. Even the Avian who attacked Cory becomes a part of the effort to overthrow Goshawk. Just when it looks like things are going Cory’s way, Goshawk attacks again trying to take more of Cory’s firsts. But this time she is bound to two men who love her, Green and Bracken, and she fights Goshawk. She even gets the memory of her first kiss back and injures Goshawk, but he gravely injures her in the attack….
Wounded, Volume 1
Little Goddess
Amy Lane
Paranormal Romance
DSP Publications; 2 edition
e book
Little Goddess: Book Two
Vol. 1
Cory fled the foothills to deal with the pain of losing Adrian, and Green watched her go. Separately, they could easily grieve themselves to death, but when an old enemy of Green's brings them back together, they can no longer hide from their grief—or their love for each other.
But Cory's grieving has cut her off from the emotional stability that's the source of her power, and Green's worry for her has left them both weak. Cory's strength comes from love, and she finds that when she's in the presence of Adrian's best friend, Bracken, she feels stronger still.
But defeating their enemy is by no means a sure thing. As the attacks against Cory and her lovers keep coming, it becomes clear that their love might not be enough if they can't heal each other—and themselves—from the wounds that almost killed them all.
The great thing about Amy Lane’s Green Hill Series (Little Goddess Series) is that the world is always the same. We jump into the world we left at the end of Wounded. Cory has returned to the hill with her husband’s victorious over Goshawk and the fae of San Francisco, In order to achieve that victory, however, Green had to unify a large number of supernatural creatures over a much larger territory. Part of this was easy, as species-ism had run rampant throughout the supernatural world, and when Green offered them acceptance and a place to belong, many of them jumped at it. But this type of unification requires a bit of maintenance, and since Green’s magic leans towards sex…well Green has to cement these connections as quickly as possible. This leads to Green having to be away from the hill and Cory being in charge. Things are complicated. Bracken’s life depends on him being faithful to Cory and Nicky’s life depends on him having sex at least once a month with either Cory or Green. Cory is still struggling to understand how SHE ended up as everyone’s beloved. And she doesn’t know how to love Nicky when bonding him to her and Green was an accident. The Avians need to be housed outside the hill, or they too may end up in unintended matings.
On top of that something weird is happening to some of the supernatural creatures. They are acting like they are intoxicated, and then their blood is toxic. Add to this that Bracken has never shared well, Nicky is struggling with the fact he likes boys more than girls and Cory is trying to adjust and get her degree! Something bad is after Cory and no one know how its going to play out…
Also, Grace’s daughter Chloe has discovered that her mother is still alive, sort of. And she and her two sons are trying to find a way to fit in at the hill, but Chloe’s bitterness towards Grace is truly toxic. And she has focused her hatred on Cory, who she feels has stolen her mother…
Bound, Volume 1
Little Goddess
Amy Lane
Paranormal Romance
DSP Publications; 2 edition
e book
Little Goddess: Book Three
Vol. 1
Humans have the option of separation, divorce, and heartbreak. For Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick, sorceress and queen of the vampires, the choices are limited to love or death. Now that she is back at Green’s Hill and assuming her duties as leader, her life is, at best, complicated. Bracken and Nicky are competing for her affections, Green is away taking care of his people, and a new supernatural enemy is threatening the sanctity of all she has come to love. Throw in a family reunion gone bad, a supernatural psychiatrist, and a killer physics class, and Cory’s life isn’t just complex, it’s psychotic.
Cory needs to get her act and her identity together, and soon, because the enemy she and her lovers are facing is a nightmare that doesn’t just kill people, it unmakes them. If she doesn’t figure out who she is and what her place is on Green’s Hill, it’s not just her life on the line. She knows from hard experience that the only thing worse than facing death is facing the death of someone she loves.
Loving people is easy—living with them is what takes the real work, and it’s even harder if you’re bound.
So, we left off with our Dream team rather desperately listing Good things, because everything seems to be going WEIRD. Nicky’s Parents have brought the Bimbo from hell to be the replacement for Cory and Cory is trying to stop EVERYONE from killing her! They finally figure out who is the cause of the WTF and boy is it a shock. It’s a child of chaos and man. Unfortunately that means that hes a chaos magnet…but now they can manage it. Cory finds the Vampire in charge to have been a good man put in a bad position-but that quickly changes when the people he asks to take care of the pedophile decide it would be easier to just get rid of Green! Let’s just put that in the bad idea category, shall we? And Cory finds herself facing the kind of grief that swamped her after Adrians death and that just ain’t gonna happen. Green survives, although it scares the hell out of everyone. Green is also dealing with a slimy reporter who thinks hes found the story of the century with the existence of the fae. And it all goes downhill from there. You will have to read it to find out what happens from there…
Rampant, Volume 2
Little Goddess
Amy Lane
Paranormal Romance
DSP Publications; 2 edition
e book
305
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M1C29R3/ref=series_rw_dp_sw
Little Goddess: Book Four
Vol. 2
Lady Cory has carved out a life for herself not just as a wife to three husbands but also as one of the rulers of the supernatural communities of Northern California—and a college student in search of that elusive degree. When a supernatural threat comes crashing into the hard-forged peace of Green's Hill, she and Green determine that they're the ones in charge of stopping the abomination that created it. To protect the people they love, Cory, Bracken, and Nicky travel to Redding to confront a tight-knit family of vampires guarding a terrible secret. It also leads them to a conflict of loyalties, as Nicky's parents threaten to tear Nicky away from the family he's come to love more than his own life.
Cory has to work hard to hold on to her temper and her life as she tries to prove that she and Green are not only leaders who will bind people to their hearts, but also protectors who will keep danger from running rampant.
This review is from: The Green’s Hill Novellas (Kindle Edition)
One of the consistencies of Amy Lane’s Greens Hill stories is that they add depth to a world that is filled with magic and love but also tragedy and angst. These stories run the gamut and add depth to character’s that have been a part of the world in minor ways, with the exception of Adrian who is one of the fan favorites. The story of Whim and Charlie adds whimsy to the world we have all come to love and on our least favorite day, Lithia. I love you a******! Really changes the dynamic between Phillip and Marcus. While we all know their taste in women has never quite meshed, in the main novels none of us realize how much drama was behind the understanding that the two men are better together than apart. And Adrian’s story shows us where he resides when he is not stalking the goddess grove–And it’s nowhere you would expect! The fact that Adrian is still a quiet voice in the universe for love and redemption is a surprise to no one, and in fact is comforting. Adrain’s innate goodness shines through, although there is a little bit of sadness and regret as he watches the world move on. It is totally clear that, although his love for Cory and Green is still strong, he wishes that his death had not occurred. It’s hard to watch their lives go on. It is Important to read these before Quickening! So buy this collection and get to know Green’s Hill a little more intimately…
Green's Hill Novellas
Little Goddess
Amy Lane
Paranormal Romance
DSP Publications; 2 edition
June 14, 2016
https://www.amazon.com/Greens-Hill-Novellas-Amy-Lane-ebook/dp/B01GQFEEV8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1496210833&sr=1-1&keywords=greens+hill+novellas
A Green's Hill Collection
Companion to the Little Goddess Series
Welcome to Green’s Hill, a small, secret collective of the fey, furry, and undead, existing unnoticed in the California foothills for over a hundred and fifty years. Whether your passion is exotic were-animals, angels, elves, or vampires, you can find them here—although things are changing on the hill.
Bound by love and honor, Cory, Green, and Adrian work to give their followers a home—but they have no idea that the effects of their true love will spread like ripples in a pond.
Be prepared for the unexpected, and ready for enchantment—you never know who will be awakened to the romantic possibilities of a vampire, a sorceress, or a pansexual elf who finds power in the force of love.
This anthology includes:
Litha's Constant Whim
It is on Litha that Whim meets Charlie, and their vows to return next Litha and finish what they started launch a thirteen-year tradition of celebration.
1st Edition published by Dreamspinner Press, June 2010.
I Love You, Asshole!
It's a good thing vampires live forever, because it might take Marcus that long to convince Phillip that gender lines are for the living.
1st Edition published by Dreamspinner Press, May 2011.
Guarding the Vampire's Ghost
An accident of divine politics has put Adrian, a twice-dead vampire, in heaven and under the care of angels Shepherd and Jefischa.
1st Edition published by Dreamspinner Press, October 2010.
1) What I am reading greatly affects my overall mood, mental health, and physical health. I was reading a book I didn’t care very much for, Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Deadmen Walking. I expected to love it, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. I was angry and irritable and it was taking me forever to get through the book. That led me to watching hours of bad crime television on YouTube.
2) Something big and bad is happening in the publishing industry-especially for paranormal authors. I’ve been shocked by the news that Laurell K Hamilton won’t be releasing a book this year. While I fully support her decision to take time to recharge and get to know her new editor, I’m hearing a lot of rumblings. A lot of readers expressed unhappiness with Crimson Death, the last Anita Blake book by Laurell K. Hamilton and I am putting that onus on the publishers and the editor they assigned to her. I am hoping that their relationship will improve or that someone will add in anther person in the process who knows Laurell K. Hamilton’s books backward, forward and upside down (other then her significant others) and can discuss whatever Laurell K. Hamilton needs or somehow help the editor get their Laurell K. Hamilton knowledge up to snuff.
3) We have to support our authors. If authors as important and big time as Laurell K. Hamilton are having trouble what about all our other authors. I need my books. They are my coping mechanism and they keep me away from my head exploding from our daily world news.
Don’t know that anyone else will say it so I will…I am going to have a great birthday today. I have so very much to be grateful for-I am alive, I have experienced great love, I have two girls, who despite being teenagers love AND like me, I have people spread far and wide who love me. And so I go into my birthday grateful and positive about whats to come.
@bestbooklover
Once he is healed enough to actually take control of the sex he is still not willing to let Cassie in at all. Cassie trusts him to not kill her but he doesn’t and he doesn’t want to get any more vulnerable to Cassie and so he limits it to oral sex and her orgasm.
Yeah good point. While Rosier’s prohibition was still in effect, that applies to demon sex, so he was held back more by his own figurative demons I think. It also highlights that Cassie and Pritkin never really make a conscious decision (about being intimate) that they commit to. Without external pressure, neither of them would initiate it.
@windsurfingthroughhell said:
Idk, I just have weird and particular ideas about consent and autonomy. I don’t like people making choices for Cassie, especially as regards her body, but this particular instance of it bothers me less than say, that Mircass scene in TtD, because Pritkin didn’t compromise her ability to consent, Rosier did, and he also apologised for it later
As @bestbooklover mentions, Cassie consented to the process at the start. What I’m curious about is why we’re all focusing on Cassie, when she was a deliberate, initiative-taking active party in the whole ordeal. It was Pritkin who was unconscious, who had his body intimately handled without his awareness or prior consent. He didn’t ask Cassie for sexual help, even though he could have; he would have never touched her in any of the scenes if not for Cassie’s demands/actions to ensure that he does.
And even when he does yield to her, he is clearly very conflicted. He is torn and upset, more so than Cassie ever was about any of her sexual encounters. It is him, not Cassie, who is broken and guilt-ridden and angry and catatonically traumatized in the shower, it’s not Cassie who needs comfort, it’s Pritkin. And Cassie has just forced him to relive his worst nightmare and do things he hates and shuns on his own volition.
I did make a satire post about this around April to illustrate double standards and biases, but since nobody addressed Pritkin’s consent, it proves that this topic might be worth a more serious post. I’m not sure whether it’s actually the books or the fandom that focuses so much on Cassie’s more minor experiences and ignores far more traumatic events for other characters, but consent should be a non-gendered topic, just like physical violence (the trivialization of which Cassie also does in the books).
Yay! I love it when we all start talking!
@freespeechfandom has some valid points. As we move through the books, there are some issues regarding Pritkin’s consent. However, if we waited for Pritkin to agree to be healed through his incubus side by Cassie-he would have died first. Pritkin definitely has a hero complex and has consistently maintained that Cassie would be better off letting him go. I agree that consent is a two sided issue and would love to see a well adjusted Pritkin so we could discuss his consent without his suicidal starving of his incubus and his outright denial of his feelings for Cassie.
As for why I keep talking about Cassie-in my opinion the whole series is about Cassie. So I am cassie-centric in my thoughts and posts.
I think Cassie supports Pritkin in the shower. I think she tries as hard as she can to be his friend. Now admittedly Cassie jumped into the deep end of friend and love interactions from the time she first comes to the Senate against her will. Cassie has never had a friend or a lover or even a real bodyguard other than Billie Joe and a hell raising, card cheating ghost from the 1800′s isnt exactly the best template for friendship.
I will be the first to admit that within the books there are boundary issues all around and there is more than enough for everyone!
I’m doing my review for both chapters (a) because I’m lazy and behind on my posts and (b) because I usually read these two chapters together anyway and I have trouble separating them in my mind.
Chapter 26 is is kind of a strange chapter, because you have such a contrast between what is happening and why it is happening. Cassie and Pritkin have sex, and it’s very intimate, but the reason for it is because it’s the only way to save Pritkin’s life. The contrast heightens the tension exponentially. The whole chapter feels on edge – will this actually save Pritkin? Will he go too far and kill Cassie by accident? Will Caleb interfere?
And to make an already awful situation even more difficult, Rosier shows up and puts a compulsion on Cassie. It’s kind of squicky, and he doesn’t help anything by saying “Let Daddy help”, but I appreciate that he wants to save his son. It gets the job done, and that’s honestly the focus of both Cassie and Rosier at this point.
Okay, I admit – I am shipper trash enough to squee over Cassie and Pritkin having a sexual encounter. But Chapter 27 moves us from the hot-but-dangerous sex to the emotional fallout. And, oh man. There is some serious fallout.
This is the chapter of emotional intimacy, and KC does not pull her punches. I’m talking, of course, about the one and only shower hug scene.
*deep breath*
I don’t think there has been another scene with the emotional weight of this one. KC has written dozens of other scenes that make me feel all the feelings, but this is the one that catches my attention before any of the others.
Cassie and Pritkin are kind of literally and emotionally naked with each other, and KC shows us this with almost no dialogue. In a few short paragraphs, we clearly see how much they care about each other and depend on each other, and not just in the saving-each-other way. The depth of their trust in each other is so obvious here. Both of them tend to repress a lot, but they don’t tend to hide from each other. It’s a gorgeous scene, and one that I love to reread often.
The whole thing about Caleb being there has always been vaguely squicky to me but a lot of Casskin sex scenes do have this discomforting edge to them? This dubcon element that’s not really either character’s fault, but which makes me uneasy when reading them, no matter how sexy the scene might be – it’s so tragic really, that they never get to be with each other just for the sake of being with each other. Well, so far.
A side note though – Pritkin is aware that Cassie isn’t in a position to give informed consent and he tries really hard to avoid doing anything that might feel like a violation to her later (it doesn’t but I think Cassie is more okay with having her body used by other people than I would be). I’m not sure whether he could safely have waited for the influence to wear off, but the key thing for me is that he apologises later. Cassie may not feel that he did anything wrong, and he was forced into a situation where he had to make that choice, but I think, and I suspect Pritkin also thinks, that it’s still a choice he didn’t have the right to make. Idk, I just have weird and particular ideas about consent and autonomy. I don’t like people making choices for Cassie, especially as regards her body, but this particular instance of it bothers me less than say, that Mircass scene in TtD, because Pritkin didn’t compromise her ability to consent, Rosier did, and he also apologised for it later – he acknowledged that it wasn’t a good situation, even if it wasn’t his fault. (of course Pritkin isn’t always perfect when it comes to consent – his 18th century self had some Issues in that regard that I wanted to talk about in EtN but then I missed those chapters, so I’ll probably bring it up in RtW when it becomes relevant).
I also appreciate that they get to have some serious fall out from this uncomfortable (albeit sexy) scene? They get to talk about their feelings, reaffirm an emotional connection, and they comfort each other. It’s wonderful.
Anyway, I 100% agree about The Shower Hug. It’s emotional destruction on an epic scale. And you know what? I never picked up on the symbolism of them being naked (or mostly naked, in Cassie’s case). Pritkin’s at his most vulnerable physically and emotionally. Damn it!
OK, So standard disclaimers apply…and you all know all of them 🙂 So, yes this is a really uncomfortable scene. You have got Pritkin unconscious and dying, war mages wanting to try magic and Cassie losing her everloving shit. For the first time ever the war mages actually listen to Cassie and let Caleb drive a dying Pritkin and wounded Cassie away. Rossier being there to help out yeah it’s squicky but given the state Pritkin is in and the state Cassie is in I’m glad Rossier stepped in. Yes it adds complications because Cassie’s consent is iffy, but in my opinion Cassie give’s consent when she starts the whole ball of wax arolling, so later consent is not really needed. She wanted to save Pritkin and by g-d she was saving his ass come hell or high water! Caleb’s freak out is annoying as hell but we need Caleb to know about Pritkin later so it works for me. I’m a little disappointed in Pritkin here. (cue screaming from others on Tumblr) Once he is healed enough to actually take control of the sex he is still not willing to let Cassie in at all. Cassie trusts him to not kill her but he doesn’t and he doesn’t want to get any more vulnerable to Cassie and so he limits it to oral sex and her orgasm. I love the fact that Karen Chance doesn’t allow Pritkin to withdraw and distance. I love the fact that after the life and death sex or die Cassie is able to be Pritkins’s emotional support in the shower. That’s more important than the sex in some ways. cassie is not letting Pritkin distance himself from her and withdraw or take the fault for this…Cassie is not going to let him make this a reason to withdraw further or add it to his noble reasons to withdraw from the field. I think this whole thing shows Cassie growing into her power. making the war mages do what she wants, making Caleb listen, bossing Rossier and Pritkin around and still declaring her independence from Mircea (don’t forget that all of this started with the rebellion and pizza)…as an aside to that given that Pritkin just told Cassie in their comical conversation over pizza there will be no more sexual healing slip ups leads to the most sexual of their healing slip ups…can anyone say irony? I am tired and my brain is stalling so this will be my two cents for a while…Please feel free to argue with me, as all of our perspectives make the reread all the more fun
Wounded, Volume 1
Wounded, Volume 1
Rampant, Volume 2
Green's Hill Novellas