snugglekitty

Title: Vulnerable: The First Book of the Little Goddess Series
Author: Amy Lane
Genre: Contemporary fantasy, erotica, GLBT
Pages: 265
Copyright Date: 2005
First Line: "If it hadn't been for Arturo, I never would have known what Renny and Mitch were, and if I hadn't known that, I never would have known what Adrian was."
Cover: Photograph. Black foreground, distorted trees and skies in the background.
Best part: The way that the characters perceive sex and relationships.
Worst part: The editing is very poor. Lots of plural errors.
Grade: B-
Recommended for: Anyone who likes the Merry Gentry books, and I know there are a lot of you out there.

Cory is just a small-town girl hiding behind a tough-girl attitude and a lot of eye makeup while she struggles to make it out of the sticks and into college. She writes her papers during the graveyard shift at the gas station. She wonders who the strange people are that regularly come into the gas station at night. Then one of them opens her eyes to a whole new world, full of vampires and pixies and runaways that can change into enormous housecats. (That was my favorite plot point, really - hundred-pound sentient tabbies? How can you not love that?) Will she find her place in this new world, or is she really what she believes herself to be - nobody special?

I wanted to get my hands on this book for a long time. It was published through iUniverse, a self-publishing house. Eventually desert_born got it for me. I hoarded it for a while and finally read it this week.

It's pretty much like the Kiss of Shadows books, except that it's much more queer.

Oh, you want more?

Fine. Well, it could have stood a good editor. Take a look at the epigraph, would you?

( Read more... )

I think this poem encapsulates a lot of my experience of the book. It's intriguing, almost haunting. I couldn't get it out of my head the other day and was trying to remember the order of the lines. But it's poorly punctuated and the plurals are not just wrong, but inconsistent too. Still, the author's writing style shines through. There are moments of brilliance. The narrative is very strong. I had mixed feelings about the ending, but I think overall it's quite a good book. If you like the Faerie porn genre of fantasy, that is.

( 207 books later... )

Five star titles, alphabetical by author

Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, & Other Outlaws by Kate Bornstein This book is not just for teenagers and the suicidal. It should be required reading for anyone who is really unhappy and/or doesn't know how to change their life.
Many Roads, One Journey by Charlotte Kasl A holistic guide to recovering from addiction, for women. Places our understanding of addiction in context of our lives and society.
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz How to naturally ferment anything in simple, easy, unintimidating steps. If you don't know what to do with your garden surplus, or have always been intimidated by the idea of canning, you must read it.
Face to Face by Audrey Kishline and Sheryl Maloy What would you say to the person who killed your child? What if you believed God wanted you to forgive them? A true story.
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott A brutally honest look at parenting from the front lines. Written with compassion and humor for everyone involved.
Strategic Sex: Why They Won't Keep It in the Bedroom edited by D. Travers Scott Possibly one of the best sexually-themed anthologies I've ever read, and I've read many.


( Four and a Half Star Books )

Still not enough? Click here for my take on last year's best nonfiction.

I have been in a mystery mood lately, so when a bookstand was closing up for the winter and giving away FREE BOOKS, I picked this one up.

My girlfriend trouble4hire was recently saying that there is a niche mystery market for everything these days. Mysteries for people who like coffee, who like knitting, who like golf for Goddess' sake. No book could prove this point more aptly than The Gourdmother, which is a mystery about a woman who moves out to the country to try to make a go of her own business... decorating gourds.

You read that correctly the first time. Talk about a niche market. I think knew vaguely that sometimes gourds get decorated. I guess I have a decorated gourd rattle that my sister got me in South America some years back. But I was never aware of the time, commitment, and passion that people bring to these objects. In that regard the book was interesting.

In general as a mystery it was okay. It was not quite a cozy - it follows the general pattern of small town, focus on friends and family, the violence happens off-page... but a very graphic and horrible act of violence is referred to at a point in the book, which I found disturbing and surprising. So, although this mystery seems to be meant for a cozy audience, I think it has a little too much edge to satisfy us. Two and a half stars.

I found this book in a used bookstore when I was craving fantasy and decided to give it a try.

Dhulyn and Parno are Mercenary Partners. The bond between them can never be broken. But when a routine guard assignment leads to treachery, betrayal, and the unveiling of secrets that have been hidden for years, that bond will be strained to its limit. Can the magically gifted forme slave and the former nobleman hold together against all comers?

This book is so good, and so unique. It made the mercs-for-hire plotline seem new and fresh again. Questions of loyalty, of belonging, and the power of the past are central. Four and a half stars.

(No, not THAT Richard Stevenson. Another one.)

First, let's begin with the hilarious summary from amazon.com, excerpted here for your reading pleasure:

"It's 1979, the height of the post-Stonewall era of gay sexual liberation, and a young man has been brutally murdered. The gay son of a wealthy family has disappeared. Now it's up to private dick Don Strachey to get to the bottom of this mess--even if he has to cruise every gay bar in the city to do it!
Set in the glorious, promiscuous pre-HIV late 1970s, Death Trick is a fast-paced excursion through the seamy underside of gay Albany. From gay discos where the hard-pumping music never stops, to the city's infamous baths, to the dark alley behind the local precinct house, this hard-bitten private dick searches for answers to the questions that plague Billy's parents and the police.
Don't you owe it to yourself to take this trick home tonight?"

Death Trick is a mystery, the first featuring gay detective Donald Strachey. I ran across it because the new installment, Death Vows, is getting good reviews. I am happy to tell you that it is much, much better than the above description would suggest. Notice how they only used the phrase "private dick" twice? How restrained of them. But anyway. What I liked best about this book is that it was a little snapshot of a time and place in the queer community, now gone forever. This is after Stonewall and before AIDS, full of promiscuity and drug use and devil-may-care attitudes, along with such commonplace homophobia as to offend the more modern sensibility.

I enjoyed the witty repartee and the shades of grey morality we find all the characters inhabiting. Most of the pop culture references passed me by. I'm not sure I actually knew that the world had so much disco in it. The ending was nothing like what I anticipated, but it was quite good. If you like queer-themed mysteries, give it a try. Three stars - a C+ in the new system, and I am planning to read the other books in the series.

I very much enjoyed Agnes and the Hitman earlier this year, so I thought I would give another of Crusie's novels a try.

Sophie Dempsey and her sister Amy are trying for their big break. Sophie is content with their small wedding-video business, but Amy has stars in her eyes. She wants to hit the big time. So it's off to the town of Temptation, Ohio, population you-don't-wanna-know, to help highstrung actress Clea Whipple make her big comeback. Problem # 1: the car accident. Problem # 2: Clea is more famous for porn than anything else. Problem # 3: the car accident was with the town's most fervent conservatives. The problems will just keep coming, but what no one knows is that the Dempseys have a system, they will do anything for each other, and they always get what they want.

This book was just plain fun. If you're interested in a small-town romance with big-city secrets and a lot of laughs, give it a try. Four stars.

This is a time of year when I read trashy fiction in all genres to soothe myself. I chose to read Lie by Moonlight because I like the Arcane Society novels by the same author (Jayne Ann Krentz, who apparently doesn't understand the true meaning of the phrase "pen name.")

Concordia Glade is a teacher. She suspects something dreadful is going to befall her four pupils, and devises a plan to spirit them away from the suspicious "private school" where they have all been living. Much to her surprise, the getaway encounters a small snag - the handsome, mysterious Ambrose Wells. Sparks immediately fly between the two of them, both romantic and confrontational, as they each attempt to pursue their own goals while trying to ignore their deepening feelings for each other.

If you like Victorian romance with headstrong women and occaisional fantasy elements, Quick is the writer to know. I found this book charming if light, and it had me laughing out loud in places - no easy feat at my least favorite time of year. Three stars (C+). Take it on a plane ride.

Angels in America was the last book for my queer book group. It is a play in two parts, "Millenium" and "Perestroika," about the AIDS crisis and the gay male community. When I started the play I thought I knew two things about it - that it involved Mormons and that it had to do with baseball. Only the former proved to be true. As for the latter, I think I may have had it confused with Angels in the Outfield. My bad.

This is a play, and I can find reading plays to be a bit awkward. But it is compelling, and there were few enough characters that I didn't get confused. The plot centers around two struggling couples - Louis and Prior and Joe and Harper. Prior is very sick. Harper is emotionally unstable. Their partners each look for something to hold on to, in the midst of chaos.

I found this play to be a bit bleak, but then, it's about the AIDS crisis. Bleak makes sense. My favorite character was actually that of Roy Cohen, who is based on a real person. Not that I liked him, but I enjoyed hating him in that way that sometimes we enjoy despising fictional villains. The play is well-written, and I would be interested in seeing it performed, though I'm less sure about watching the movie. Three stars - a C+ in the new system. I think it deserves craft points though I didn't enjoy it as much as a four or a B.

omnia_mutantur, who is also in the book group, suggested that we all bring lists of the books we would have chosen for the group to our last meeting. We are also going to bring one or two favorites "in the binding" as it were. My top two choices are Companion to Wolves and The Merro Tree. What would yours be?

I read a book bad enough that I didn't want to write a review. That was The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I had chosen it for lack of literary merit but my choice was a bit too good. English speech patterns have changed since the Napoleonic Wars. Enough said. But it was an enjoyable bit of fluff if you can ignore that. Two stars.

I also finished Greyhounds: Everything About Purchase, Care, Nutrition, Behavior, and Training by D. Caroline Coile. This book is short and full of color pictures, compared with Retired Racing Greyhounds for Dummies, which is long and full of interesting facts. I thought it was a good overview. You can definitely tell that the author has a bit of a bias towards show greyhounds as opposed to racing greyhounds.

Here is a quote:
"It is undeniably special to save the life of a retired racer, but keep in mind that the AKC Greyhound puppy could need you just as much.. Responsible breeders do not breed a litter unless there are homes lined up for puppies, and the greater availability of retired racers has meant that most people wanting a pet Greyhound get a Greyhound from racing stock, not show stock... If these dogs were bred, show breeders fear that the influx of their genes into the AKC show Greyhound type." p 10

I don't feel that saving the life of something that's alive is morally equivalent to setting up a situation where a new life will be created or contributing to the preservation of purebred stock. It seems to me to be a bit irresponsible to get a purebred show puppy purely as a pet when there are still thousands of former racing dogs put down every year. (Of course, if showing dogs is your thing, that's different...) It reminds me of that flyer you see sometimes where you can save 10,000 cats by spaying your cat. Saving is not the same thing as preventing something from being born either.

In general, though, I think that this is a good book. Three stars. Stay tuned for my review of Retired Racing Greyhounds for Dummies, when I get done with it. :)

This book is the second in the popular Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. The first was The Cater Street Hangman, in which they were Inspector Pitt and Miss Ellison. Now they are happily married, with a baby on the way. Charlotte is shocked when her husband tells her that the skeletons of two babies have been found in the tony Callander Square. She is sure there must be something that she can do to help solve the mystery...

This book features multiple viewpoints, including Charlotte and her sister Emily, as well as people living in the Callander Square neighborhood. The plots are intricate and realistic - this novel really captures the simmering eroticism, poverty, and violence lurking below the veneer of Victorian life - and are resolved in the end in ways you never would have expected.

Perry does not disappoint. Changes among the "family" characters are generally slow and in the background, while the "case" families are prominent. I enjoyed this, although I hear that the books start to go downhill around number 25. Guess I'll just have to stop reading before then. :) Three stars - a C+ in the new system.