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.
Since the next book is currently in arc form I decided to do a reread…these are the things that spoke to me…
Touch the Dark
I usually did the Goth thing, or as close as I could get without looking truly awful—strawberry blondes don’t wear black well—but that was when I was working. I found out pretty early that no one takes a fortune-teller seriously if she shows up in pastels. But on my days off I reserved the right not to look like I was going to a funeral. My life is depressing enough without help.
My parents were an obstacle to his ambition, so they were removed. Simple.
. I was like some kind of poison—get anywhere near me, and you’re lucky if you just die.
My only thought was that, in a room full of vampires, it would be my luck to get killed by the only other human.
… it wasn’t a surprise. Where my life was concerned, I’d learned long ago that everyone wanted to use me for something.
Claimed by shadow
gave myself a mental slap. At the rate things were going, I was going to need therapy.
At this rate, I was going to be the youngest person ever to die from a stress-induced stroke.
“The only thing I want is a nice, uncomplicated life. With no one trying to kill me, manipulate me or betray me.” And where, if I messed up on the job, I didn’t get anyone killed
Embrace the night
Tomorrow there would be trouble and danger and pain, and I didn’t know if I would be smart enough or strong enough or capable enough to handle it all, especially now that I understood what I was up against. But I knew one thing: today, finally, something had gone right.
Buying Trouble
Gamelans don’t merely speak the truth, they rip away all the happy little lies we tell ourselves to mask it, forcing us to acknowledge it deep in our very souls. They make us face the raw facts about our lives, and most of the time, they’re not pretty.
Death’s Mistress
, I just stood there, swaying a little on my feet and wondering how paranoid a person had to be before she decided the toys were out to get her. But in the end, I shrugged my shoulders and just
. I realized that I wanted it to be real, all of it, wanted him to have cared about her, wanted him to care about me. And I was so very afraid that he didn’t. It was easier not to ask, to let the possibility last a little longer
A Family Affair
A lot of people believed that John had a death wish. Even some of those closest to him acted like they suspected it, despite denying it when anyone else brought it up. But it had never been true. There had been times when he could honestly say he hadn’t cared much, either way, but he’d never been suicidal.
Ride the Storm
You have to let go, Cassie.” Yeah, people had been telling me that all my life, too. To the point that I’d started to tell it to myself: don’t care, don’t love, let everyone and everything that matters slip away. Let life take them, let it have them, because it’s going to anyway, because that’s all it does: take and consume and destroy. It lets you feel happy so the pain hurts more, lets you have hope so it can crush it, lets you have loved so it can rip it away. You can fight against it, but it’s a trap, the whole damn thing. Better get used to it. But I wasn’t used to it. I’d never gotten used to it. I was tired of it, sick to death of it, and furious, so furious I could barely see.
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.
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/
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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.
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.
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 book picks up pretty much where we left off in Bound. There is an odd news story and they send Teague with Mario to check it out. Unfortunately, what they find is a zombiefied Bear which follows them home to the Hill. After a comical battle, in which the fae get their pound of flesh by throwing Bracken at it, they go down and find a young girl who was brutally raped and turned into a vampire and then abandoned. She did what lots of vampires do and returned to her family and brutally killed them. She them started killing wild animals for companions and then trying to convert them so she would have friends. Cory and the Dream Team bring the little vamp back to the hill, but have no choice but to keep her locked in the vamp proof rooms. They trace the pedophile to Redding and go to find out what the heck is going on…and find themselves trapped in a sitcom. Like, really-everything that can go bizarre does! And with this crew thats quite a bit of WTF to try to manage…
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.
@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
