Devil May Cry by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Mortification Scale: 4 Tomato Faces

• 2 TFs for being a romance novel
• 3rd TF for being a paranormal romance novel
• 4th TF for a corny cover

Mitigating Factors:

• Good refresher on Sumerian mythology - the hero is a Sumerian fertility god - I had flashbacks to my Heroic Tales from the Mediterranean class
• Really really sexy!

Synopsis:

Katra is the daughter of Acheron (Cursed Atlantean god) and Artemis (Greek goddess of the hunt and of virginity - hah!). Sin is an ancient Sumerian fertility god whose godhood was stolen from him one night in Artemis' temple, leaving him "merely" a powerful immortal. The two meet when Katra is sent by her mother to kill Sin. Rather than kill him, Katra falls in lust with him, decides to end 11,000 years of celibacy and joins him in his fight against Sumerian demons that are being unleashed on the world.

Series update: Acheron learns that he has a daughter. Apollyni (Atlantean goddess of destruction - Acheron's mommy) is shown in a more favourable light. Daimon's are shown more sympathetically as not necessarily evil, especially as compared to the gallu, the new Sumerian demons.

Fast paced, interesting, and a little blush-inducing from the HOT love scenes. You go Sherrilyn!

Valley of Silence by Nora Roberts - 3rd Book of Circle Trilogy

Mortification Scale: 4 Tomato Faces

• 2 TFs for reading a romance novel
• 3rd for a paranormal romance novel
• 4th for being a trilogy

Mitigating Factors:

• The hero is a vampire
• The whole thing is a lot of fun

Synopsis:



This book picks up where Dance of the Gods left off, thus explaining why it's a trilogy. :) The group of 6 is now formed of 2 sets of couples, a crown princess from another world, and an Irish vampire. Moira, the crown princess brings her friends home to her world by traveling through a dance (stone circle) from Ireland. There, she becomes queen of Geall, seduces Cian (the vampire), and leads her medieval, pastoral country to war against the invading demon army. It's a very busy book.

Again, something that should be unreadable somehow works in a very satisfying way. I wouldn't try this book as a stand-alone, but it is a great wrap-up of the series. In fact, the final scene is one of those, 50 years later....type of scenes. Good stuff!

Dance of the Gods by Nora Roberts - Book 2 Circle Trilogy

Mortification Scale: 4 Tomato Faces

• 2 TFs for reading a romance novel
• 3rd for being a paranormal romance novel
• 4th for being a trilogy
  

Mitigating Factors:

• Nora Roberts is an excellent writer
• The heroine kicks ass!
• It has some Celtic history (very very little)

Synopsis:

I didn't read the first book in the trilogy, Morrigan's Cross, because my library only had books 2 & 3, and I didn't feel like paying for this particular story line. However, I had no problem jumping right into the plot. On the west coast of Ireland, there is a group of people who are fighting demon vampires to save our world and all other worlds in the universe. This group is composed of 3 men and 3 women. Hmm, I wonder what will happen. So far, the witch and the time-travelling warlock have already hooked up and a large battle was fought. Now, it is time to focus on Blair, a Buffy-life demon slayer, and Larkin, a shape changing prince from another world.

Oddly enough, they find true love while overcoming seemingly unbeatable odds. The plot is straight out of Romance 101, and the paranormal bits are achingly unbelievable, but it still manages to be an excellent read. I love Nora Roberts! Of course, I blush to recommend this book to anyone. :)

Wizards edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

Mortification Factors: 3 Tomato Faces

• 1 TF for being SciFi/Fantasy
• 2nd TF for embarrassing cover art
• 3rd TF for being an anthology - for some reason, people look down on anthologies

Mitigating Factors:

• Some excellent short stories
• Story by Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Stardust, etc.)

Synopsis:

A very nice collection of stories edited wby Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. Neil Gaiman made a contribution with a story about a live boy living in a cemetary with ghosts, ghouls, and vampires. This particular story was very powerful and very very odd. Another big name draw is Orson Scott Card who provided a coming of age story of a boy from the mountains coming down to the big city and discovering what his affinity for stone really means. Tanith Lee is still writing and I was happy to read her story, Zinder. These three and 15 others made up the fairly substantial compilation.

Most of the stories in this anthology are coming of age tales directed toward the young adult market. However, I'll never be too old to enjoy this genre!

Mother of Lies by Dave Duncan

Mortification Scale: 1 Tomato Face

• 1 TF for being a SciFi/Fantasy novel

Mitigating Factors:

• Really cool cover art
• Excellent book
• Interesting good vs. evil philosophical argument

Synopsis:

This book takes up where Children of Chaos left off, with the 4 children of Celebre's doge having been reunited. Together, they defeat their enemies and then 3 of them make their way over the edge of the world. I didn't catch this at the time, but according to the author's postscript, this world is a dodecahedron and thus the edges are quite edgelike. They make their way onto the face of the world from whence they came and then home to the palace in Celebre.

The book is fast paced and witty. This is not quite as satisfying a read as Children of Chaos was, but it does wrap up the major plot lines, with a few tidbits left hanging to chew on. I'd recommend reading both books in one sitting, as it really seems to be one book separated for publishing purposes.

Deadly Game by Christine Feehan

Mortification Scale: 3 Tomato Faces

• 2 TFs for being a romance novel
• 3rd TF for embarrassing cover art

Redeeming Features:

• None!

Synopsis:

Ken, the twin brother of Jack (protagonist of Conspiracy Game), captures Mari, the twin sister of Briony (heroine of Conspiracy Game), while they are on separate missions to guard a US Senator.

They immediately fall deep into lust and even though Ken has been tortured and is scarred over his entire (yes, ENTIRE) body, they make sweet sweet love. Of course, due to the scarring, the sweetness needs to be a little rough. Read the book if you want details! Odd, but interesting. When Mari escapes back to her hellish life in a secret laboratory (I told you that this book has no redeeming features), Ken follows, saving her from rape, death, etc. etc.

I know that the twin thing is appealing. So tempting to do a group of brothers hooking up with a group of sisters. Unfortunately, in this case, the first pairing was much more engaging than the 2nd. This was the 5th book in a series. I'm on the fence about reading the 6th. I might have better things to do with those 2 hours of my life. Hmmm.

Conspiracy Game by Christine Feehan

Mortification Scale: 3 Tomato Faces

• 2 TFs for being a Romance novel
• 3rd for an embarrassing cover

Mitigating Features:

• Awesome Special Forces hero
  
• Cool circus performing heroine
• Paranormal romance, which I happen to love

Synopsis:

This book is the 4th in a paranormal military series by Christine Feehan, one of the hottest new authors in the genre. The opening scene is Jack Norton being tortured in the Democratic Republic of Congo by a rebel group. He escapes, kills his torturers, and manages to make his way through the jungle to the outskirts Kinshasa, where he meets Briony, a trapeze artist performing with her 4 brothers for a music festival. Briony saves Jack's life and takes him back to her hotel where their intense chemistry takes over. It turns out that Jack and Briony were literally made for each other. They were bioengineered by a Dr Peter Whitney to have the eyesight of a heat-sensing eagle, the skin of a chameleon, and superhuman physical and psychical powers. They also have a fantastic sense of smell making them particularly susceptible to each other's pheromones. It's not a huge shock that she turns up preggers.

Jack has already been extracted from Kinshasa and returned to the US. He did not handle the separation smoothly and left Briony with the strong impression that he never wanted to see her again. However, when strange men attacked her and her brothers trying to kidnap Briony and her unborn child, Briony had no choice but to turn to Jack for protection. Jack and his twin brother, Ken welcome Briony to their home in Montana and indeed protect her when the same those same men come for her once again. They all make it through and decide to join up with the group of enhanced soldiers and superchicks from the 3 previous novels in the series. I think that I'm going to Borders tonight for the next book.

The Prince Kidnaps a Bride by Christina Dodd

Mortification Scale: 5 Tomato Faces

• 1 TF for being a Romance novel
• 2nd TF for an awful title
  
• 3rd TF for having embarrassing cover art
• 4th TF for being a trade paperback
• 5th TF for being a historical romance about a nonexistent European principality

Mitigating Features:

• A charming heroine
• A brooding hero
• 2-3 hours of blissful escape from reality!

Synopsis:

Princess Sorcha is the exiled Crown Princess of Beaumontagne, living in a Scottish convent. Prince Rainger is the rightful ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Richarte. They have been betrothed since they were children, but haven't seen each other since the concurrent revolutions in their two countries 10 years ago. After escaping from a dungeon where he was imprisoned for 8 years, Rainger went looking for his betrothed, for only the army of Beaumontagne can help him to overthrow Richarte's usurper king and restore Rainger to his throne. Of course, for some strange reason known only to romance authoresses, Rainger decides to disguise himself as a French peasant and deceive his bride as to his identity setting up the conflict of hurt feelings and betrayal.

Sorcha is a delightful 25 year old virgin who has lived with nuns on an island off Scotland's coast since she was 18. When she finally decides that it might be time to go home, she gets drunk, sings on tables, has lunch with prostitutes and precociously offers to blow Rainger's "hornpipe". Hmmm. There's a nice make out scene in a stone circle and another great morning-after scene when Sorcha learns that she just married her actual betrothed, the Prince of Richarte rather than the simple-minded peasant, Arnaud, who she fell in love with. Don't ask why she would fall in love with a dirty, smelly, one-eyed peasant with an IQ of about 80. That is immaterial to the plot-line. :) This novel concludes with Sorcha and Rainger deeply in love and being crowned the joint leaders of their joined countries. The climax left me feeling a potent blend of guilt and pleasure. Every once in awhile I crave a little cotton candy for the mind.

The Visitor by Sheri S. Tepper

Mortification Scale: One Tomato Face

• Fantasy novel

Mitigating Factors:

• Sheri S. Tepper is one of the best authors in the world
• Only an idiot would discount this fabulous book for being fantasy/sci fi
• Reintroduced me to the concept of synesthesia
• Great argument for rationalism as opposed to superstition
• I always love post-apocalyptica

Synopsis:

The time is 3052 AD. After the UFO struck Earth, only one in one thousand people survived. Slowly, societies began to rebuild in various small pockets. One of these enclaves, the Saved, was founded by a group of embittered members of the religious right. Predictably, this society is fairly horrific. There is a totalitarian government, strict moral strictures, and the lovely practice of "bottling" people when they are ill or defective. Bottling is saving a small chunk of flesh and keeping it alive with nutrient washes. This custom grew out of the original thought that if a zygote was considered to be life, then a single cell of an individual was equivalent to the entire being and thus everyone could achieve immortality by their cells' eternal life. Yuck!

It turns out that the UFO was actually a group of alien life forms returning to earth in response to the prayers of the faithful for God to step in and solve the world's problems. "God" answered and she decided that killing off most of the world and then separating the sheep from the goats was the solution. Maybe not quite what the fundamentalists had in mind - be careful what you wish for. 21 people from different areas of the surviving land masses (the seas have risen) are now incarnations of various alien consciousnesses and are responsible for saving the world. There is also a small group of scientists that have been alive since the catastrophe by taking four year shifts of being awake and then sleeping in suspended animation for dozens of years before waking for the next shift. The battle against evil is a lot of fun.

The Visitor is a little less accessible than Ms. Tepper's other books, but has her recurring themes of environmentalism, feminism and rationalism. This is an excellent book by an amazing author!

The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones

Mortification Scale: 3 Tomato Faces

• 1 TF for being a children's book
• 2nd TF for being a sci-fi/fantasy novel
• 3rd TF for an embarrassing cover

Mitigating Features:

• DWF is English and we all know that English writers are smarter. :)
• Recurrent theme of selfishness in children being rewarded. NOT an idealized view of childhood.
• Weaves in quite a bit of Welsh mythology

Synopsis:

Two children who belong to the royal court of an alternate universe England, discover a conspiracy among a few of the greatest mages of the court. The earthmage and the Merlin (a title) have ensorcelled the court for some nefarious purpose. With the help of assorted adults and a teenage boy from another world, these children save their world and the multiverse (multitude of universes). The story takes us through a few different worlds and revisits a couple of characters from a previous Magid book. Not bad though not DWJ's best effort. I do enjoy children's books that do not worship childhood. It's fun that the moral lesson seems to be: be selfish (but grow out of it eventually) and quest for knowledge. In my opinion, not bad lessons for children to learn. I remember reading some Swedish fairy tales a few years ago in which one of the moral lessons was, be clean. Seriously, a boy somehow triumphed over evil by virtue of his cleanliness. Interesting.

Benighted by Kit Whitfield (Bareback in UK Edition)

Mortification Scale:

• 1 TF for being a fantasy novel
• 2nd TF for being about werewolves

Mitigating Features:

• Warner Bros is making it into a movie
• It has an unhappy/neutral ending, thus making it artsy!
• The author is English, thus classier to us Anglophiles!
• Cool alternate history including the Inquisition. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Synopsis:

Lola May is a bareback, a non-lycanthrope in a world in which 99% of the population grows fur every full moon. This birth defect is rare, yet valued for the ability to police the lupe population during moon nights. All non-werewolves are seconded into an organization that was established during the Inquisition to identify and deal with demons and other dangerous creatures. Since that time, the organization has gone through many incarnations, at the current time serving as a sort of FBI of the lupes. Each "normal" human who becomes a lupe is expected to stay indoors in special rooms. When in their animal forms, they have no human consciousness and are incredibly dangerous. Any loose lupe must be rounded up, caged, and prosecuted for failing to uphold the law. However, lupes are not to be held accountable for their behavior while shifted and are not to be injured in any way during capture.

Lola lives her dreary, depressing life as a mutant in a world of werewolves. Her relationship with her lupe family and bareback friends/coworkers are uniformly awful. The spot of sunshine in her life is her new nephew, Leo. Also, she begins dating a lupe, her first non-bareback lover. Life is looking up until a madman/dog begins stalking her and Lola May discovers a conspiracy that changes everything... All in all, a good book with some involving scenes and thought provoking concepts. Excellent first novel.

Children of Chaos by Dave Duncan

Mortification Scale:

• 1 TF for being a SciFi/Fantasy novel
• 2nd TF for an embarrassing title
• 3rd & 4th TF for REALLY embarrassing cover

Mitigating Factors:

• Fantastic polytheistic world structure. Fairly original.
• Engrossing political intrigue
• Nice Harold & Maud style romance for one of the protagonists. OK to be fair, his lady-friend is more a cougar than a Maud

Synopsis:

A Venetian-style small country is conquered by a barbarian horde. As a condition of surrender, the Doge is required to give his wife and four children as hostages to his good behaviour and puppet governance. The book then jumps about 15 years to the now grown hostage children. They were each sent to different cities under the governance of different siblings of the leader of the horde. One is an artist in love with an older woman; another is a Stockholm-syndrome victim who has joined the army/horde (I say horde, because a condition of the armed forces in this reality is dedication to a god who confers a war-beast morphing capability in battle); another is a dedicate to the goddess of death, and a delightful young lady; the last, the eldest, has been hideously mutilated and is a seer. In this first book of a duology, the mother's fate is yet unknown.

The plot line of this book is mostly devoted to establishing and developing the characters. The siblings do not meet until the final chapters. The next book, out in March 2008, yippee! will continue with their journey to their country of origin. There, they will decide which of the four will rule after their father's death, which event is feared to be imminent. Action-packed! My fave is that each person in this reality is dedicated to one god(dess) or another. This dedication confers power and special abilities. A darn good read! So phooey on cover snobs! You're missing out.

High Noon by Nora Roberts

Mortification Scale: 2 Tomato Faces

• 2 TFs for being a romance novel

Mitigating Features:

• Almost every woman in the U.S. has read at least one Nora Roberts novel
• Well-researched police hostage negotiator protagonist
• Interesting use of current, evolving cultural norms, eg. the hero almost Googled the heroine, then decided to get to know her slowly rather than research her
• A ripping good yarn!

Synopsis:

Phoebe is a divorced, single mother living with daughter, agoraphobic mother and aunt-like friend of the family in the ancentral Savannah home. Her work as a hostage negotiator brings her across a lottery winning, Irish pub owning, philanthropist/businessman who lives in jeans and rumpled t-shirts. They manage to hit it off and have a couple of steamy sex scenes amongst the turmoil of Phoebe's intense family life (throw in a traumatic childhood brutalization); her sexual assault by a co-worker; and her work as a driven negotiator. This all occurs while she is being stalked by the lover of a woman who died during one of Phoebe's prior cases. Wow! Honestly, one of the most chaste romance novels I've ever read, mostly 'cause these two barely had time to email each other, much less get it on. The story ends with the traditional engagement ring. Altogether, this book gave me 3 satisfying hours on a Saturday afternoon.

A Sudden Wild Magic by Diana Wynne Jones

Mortification Scale: 3 Tomato Faces

• 1 TFs for being a children's book
• 2nd TF for being a fantasy novel
• 3rd TF for having "magic" in title
  

Mitigating Features:

• DWJ is English! Everyone knows that English novels are more intellectual. ;)
• Female protagonist who refuses to stay in dysfunctional relationship
• Interesting alternate universe
  

Synopsis:

A British magician discovers that England and the world are being manipulated by a group of magic users in an alternate universe. This mysterious group has been creating catastrophes and then observing what Earthians come up with, for purposes unknown. A few examples are Chernobyl, global warming, and WWII. Once this has been discovered, the British mage council sent a space shuttle/tour bus filled with young women to create havoc in the alternate universe. Wacky hijinks ensue. Appearances are made by such fantasy stock characters as the grumpy witch & wizard, the evil witch, the dumpy king, put-upon teenager, etc. DWJ is always fun and refreshing to read - they remind me of sparkling pomegranate juice for the mind. :)