ELITIST BOOK REVIEWS

I’ve been on a bit of a Joe Lansdale kick lately. He’s become one of my favorite short story authors, and I am continually impressed by how easily he seems to transition between short and long fiction. You’ll recall that I loved his novel THE THICKET (EBR Review), and once I finished it I immediately purchased a copy of his prior novel, EDGE OF DARK WATER (Amazon).

I loved it.
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In this latest installment of Cat Adams’ The Blood Singer series, we begin TO DANCE WITH THE DEVIL (Amazon) with Celia in therapy. Her mother hates her, Celia’s grandmother doesn’t understand their animosity, all the while dealing with her own problem of being part-vampire and hunted by demons. But it’s not the therapy that lands her in the hospital. No, it’s the guys in suits who run her off the road, trash her car, and leave her on a sun-soaked beach to burn alive.

Not really the relaxing weekend she was hoping for.
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Lucian de Remeni-Masson is convinced it was his indiscretion that lead to the death of his entire family. As a pure-blood sorcerer he is forbidden to even talk to ordinaries–those who have no magic–much less allow one to see him unmasked or perform magic, yet he did.

Years have passed since his college dalliance, but he still fears he hasn’t completely escaped the consequences and finds himself at the mercy of the Pureblood Registry. Despite good behavior and hard work using his talent for magically created portraits, he is contracted to work for a mere coroner drawing the corpses of ordinaries whose identities are unknown. Lucian fears his fortunes have sunk so low that he may never find favor in the eyes of the Registry again.

But it is while drawing the dead that Lucian begins to uncover abilities he thought he’d lost, and as a result the past begins to unfold a narrative that is much more complicated than he anticipated.
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I am continually fascinated by novels and short stories being made into movies and TV shows. Half the fun of it is the whole process of comparing the two versions and having that debate about which is “better”. I realize how fruitless such comparisons can be, and I also realize that most people opt for the auto-response of “the book is better”. Thing is, that isn’t always the case. Just look at the Dexter novels vs. the TV show as an easy example.
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At GenCon 2014, I was lucky enough to be introduced to the Kyoudai Games crew, and they graciously provided me with a review copy of THUNDERSCAPE: THE WORLD OF ADEN (DriveThurRPG) to review for EBR.

Thunderscape is the product of a labor of love from Shawn Carmen (of Legend of the Five Rings fame), and his team. Based on older video games, the best genre to describe the setting as (using buzzwords) is post-apocalyptic, techno-fantasy, horror.

Sounds like a win right?
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A few pages into Stephen Blackmoore’s DEAD THINGS (Amazon) I realized I would want to start reading the sequel immediately after finishing so I took a risk and ordered BROKEN SOULS (Amazon). Having finished DEAD THINGS I now recognize this was a wise decision. Yay me! Based off the cover alone my eyes would have likely skipped past this novel on a store shelf — there’s nothing wrong with it but there are a hundred trillion other urban fantasy novels with Christian McGrath covers and who has the time to sift through them all? Thankfully, DEAD THINGS comes with a recommendation by M.L. Brennan, whose American Vampire series turns me into a squealing fangirl. I enjoy Brennan’s work because she diverges from the typical hard-boiled style urban fantasy. I enjoyed Blackmoore’s novel because he embraces it with aplomb.
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I’d been curious about HEMLOCK GROVE for a while. Netflix had made a series out of it. The series got mixed reviews, but was renewed for a second season. A lot of people have asked me if I’d read the book it was based on and if I’d also watched the first season. So when I was offered a review copy o the novel, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to satisfy that curiosity.
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Steve knows that my favorite author is David Gemmell, whom I consider the epitome of true heroic fantasy. So when a copy of THE CITY by Stella Gemmell (Amazon) crossed his desk, he knowingly tossed it my way.

First off, I confess that my perception going into this book was colored by my adoration of David Gemmell and I was excited to get back to that style of story. This is not that style of story. This is a dark fantasy story, more akin to a combination of Joe Abercrombie and Guy Gavriel Kay.
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