FYI! The editor, TDF Pamela, is currently nomadic! In other words, she's in the process of moving cross-country, and therefore her address has changed and probably will change a couple more times in the next few months.
If you would like to send a review copy, please email her first to make sure you have the most up to date address.
Thanks!
Contact us!
TDF Staff Editor/Head Writer:
TDF Pamela
Contributors:
The Bibliomaniac
Emily
Finn
Stacy B
Strangeness Abounds
Wenchie
WereGeek
To read more about us, head over and meet the geeks!
|
bibliomaniac, on July 2nd, 2010 |
Buy It Now: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1848565283/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1JKZZ70D9EY18NN0KY36&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846
Description: Way back in April 1862, Confederate Captain Jubal Beauchamp leads a charge across a Georgia battleground… Fast forward to 2009 and a Civil War re-enactment becomes all too real. When Sam and Dean head down South to investigate they find that history has got somewhat out of hand…
This review is based on a free review copy received from the publisher/author.
The Bibliomaniac ‘s Review:
Joe Schreiber is perhaps best known for the much-hyped Star Wars tie-in zombie novel Death Troopers, considered one of the more compelling books in that particular franchise. I mention this to illustrate his smooth and nearly invisible writing style; free of extraneous fillips or an overexaggerated way with words, he uses that same neat, terse style in The Unholy Cause, effortlessly building a subliminal feeling of tension throughout the whole story. There are numerous places in the story where a turn of phrase or bit of description made me grin in pleasure—a casual allusion to Star Wars, Dean’s mention of furries to the still-innocent Castiel—but as an example, take this beautiful line describing the markers in an old Southern cemetery:
“The names had disappeared completely off many of the stones, leaving only smooth amnesiac marble.”
The Unholy Cause takes place at some point during Season Five, since the second chapter opens with Sam having a none-too-pleasant dream about Lucifer coming for him. Sam and Dean end up taking over a case in Georgia from fellow hunter Rufus, whose anonymous tip seems to have come straight from Lucifer himself. What they find in Mission’s Ridge, Georgia is both compelling and suspicious: an unexplainable pair of deaths among a pair of Civil War re-enactors, and their companion Castiel continuing his search for God, trying to track down someone who was apparently a witness to the Last Supper.
There are a number of fascinating secondary characters in this novel— Castiel’s “Witness”, coroner Todd Winston, fellow hunter Tommy McClane and his young son Nate, Civil War re-enactor Sarah Rafferty—but none are more interesting than Sheriff Jack (Jacqueline) Daniels, whose occult tattoo and hostile stonewalling of the boys’ investigation set up one of the book’s biggest red herrings. She sees through the brothers’ ‘Agent Townes and Van Zandt’ aliases without blinking and has no problem arresting them when she feels they’re interfering in her own investigation.
When the reveal comes about Castiel’s “Witness”, it isn’t much of a surprise—having been discussed much earlier in the book—but Schreiber uses that particular element of Christian mythology to better effect than many other previous movies and books have done. The novel fits in seamlessly with Season Five’s mythology, and would make a fantastic episode of the series, save for the fact that the explosive finale would cost so much to make on a TV budget that it’d be better suited for a big-screen movie.
I don’t often read movie or TV show tie-in novels—not even for movies or TV series that I like—but both the previous Supernatural novel I reviewed here and The Unholy Cause are making me reconsider that choice. Both fit in with the series’ canon so well that I couldn’t find anything to dislike about them, and I’m happy to recommend The Unholy Cause to fans of the show—and fans of genre novels in general—without a moment’s hesitation.
 The Bibliomaniac
Ye olde author (emphasis on the OLD) likes the weird and the strange, which explains most of her friends. Married, with two daughters, she has earned a B.A. in Literature and a B.S. in Criminal Justice. Her interests include reading and writing (of course!), gardening, poetry, comic books, herbalism, chocolate, tea, mythology and fairy tales, comparative theology and alternative religions, Celtic and darkwave music, role-playing games and LARPing, horror movies, hiking and camping, SF conventions, and the martial arts. She lives with her husband, her younger daughter, five cats, a dog, and a houseful of gargoyles somewhere east of Chicago. She can be contacted at BrigidsBlest @ yahoo.com.
profile
bibliomaniac, on May 29th, 2010 |
Fever Dream by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Description: At the old family manse in Louisiana, Special Agent Pendergast is putting to rest long-ignored reminders of his wife Helen’s tragic death, only to make a dreadful discovery. Helen had been mauled by a large and vicious lion while they were big game hunting in Africa. But now Pendergast finds that her rifle—her only protection from the beast—had been deliberately loaded with blanks. Who could have wanted Helen dead…and why?
With Lt. Vincent D’Agosta’s assistance, Pendergast embarks on a quest for justice. It is a journey that sends him deep into his murdered wife’s past, where he is stunned by how much she kept hidden from him. Helen Pendergast had nursed a private obsession with the famed naturalist-painter John James Audubon and spent years hunting for an infamous, long-lost painting of his known as the Black Frame.
In a night of shocking violence deep in the Louisiana bayou, Pendergast gains some answers to the riddle of his wife’s death, but he is left with an even greater mystery: Who was the woman he married?
This review is based on a free review copy received from the publisher/author.
The Bibliomaniac’s Review: 
Preston and Child are back at it again, giving us another delicious Pendergast book to savor. This one contains some substantial information about his past, and a look at another part of his family, one of the areas which his companions and the readers know the least about. Fever Dream gives us a more in-depth look at his late wife Helen, and the reader discovers along with Pendergast that there was a great deal that he did not know about her.
Fever Dream moves at a slower pace than some of the previous Pendergast novels, especially Dance of Death, The Book of the Dead, and Cemetery Dance, but the subdued intensity and pacing allows the reader to more fully immerse themselves in the story, rather than rushing along at a breakneck speed to get to each new revelation. Preston and Child have lost none of their style or ability to stun and shock; here it is drawn out in a tantalizing way.
Along for the ride with Pendergast is his usual Watson, Vince D’Agosta of the NYPD. Joining him roughly two-thirds through the story is D’Agosta’s co-worker and lover, Laura Hayward. These two have different approaches to helping Pendergast on his quest, and Hayward must be convinced that what they are doing is right, but without their help, Pendergast would—for a change—be unable to succeed. There are plenty of thrills, injuries, and near-death misses along the way to keep the price of Pendergast’s revenge high.
The sole quibble to this novel was the way it ended. For a change, Pendergast has not finished the story as the ultimate victor, and one mighty hefty plot thread has been left unresolved, presumably until the next novel in the cycle. While I really dislike cliffhanger endings, this one does at least hold out the promise that there will be another book in the series, although it may be some time in coming, as the authors have begun a new series featuring a new protagonist. The first novel in that series is due out in the winter of 2011, so it may be 2012 or even later before Pendergast fans like me can have their next fix. Nonetheless, Fever Dream is a more-than-worthwhile entry to the series to keep readers enthralled until the next one arrives.
The Bibliomaniac
Ye olde author (emphasis on the OLD) likes the weird and the strange, which explains most of her friends. Married, with two daughters, she has earned a B.A. in Literature and a B.S. in Criminal Justice. Her interests include reading and writing (of course!), gardening, poetry, comic books, herbalism, chocolate, tea, mythology and fairy tales, comparative theology and alternative religions, Celtic and darkwave music, role-playing games and LARPing, horror movies, hiking and camping, SF conventions, and the martial arts. She lives with her husband, her younger daughter, five cats, a dog, and a houseful of gargoyles somewhere east of Chicago. She can be contacted at BrigidsBlest @ yahoo.com.
profile
bibliomaniac, on April 5th, 2010 |
Buy It Now: on Amazon.com
Description: Psychologist and psychic Megan Chase has grown remarkably comfortable hanging out with demons. The demon “family” she leads is happy, her solo practice is stabilizing, and she and her steamy demon lover, Greyson Dante, are closer than ever. But when the couple books a week at a luxury hotel to attend a meeting of demon leaders, some unanticipated problems appear. An FBI agent with an unhealthy interest in less-than-legitimate demon business practices shows up; the demon community is urging Megan to undergo the rite that will make her a real demon; and a slightly shady minister is holding one of his wildly popular “weekend exorcisms” just down the road. And oh, yes, someone with scary magical abilities is attempting to kill her. Then, just when it seems as if things couldn’t possibly get any worse, a secret comes to light that could jeopardize Megan and Greyson’s future — if Megan manages to live that long. With things heating up, it’s becoming difficult for her to keep a cool head…
This review is based on a free, review copy received from the publisher/author.
The Bibliomaniac’s Review:  
Series recap:
In Personal Demon, psychotherapist Megan Chase is alarmed when she starts seeing ugly little demons on everyone’s shoulders. Her alarm only grows when she meets shady lawyer Greyson Dante, who tells her that everyone in the world has a personal demon—except her. Alarm turns to fear when something even worse tries to kill her; the tribulations she faces trying to stay alive are more than nicely balanced out by her growing romance with Dante, who’s a demon of a different sort himself. A stint of mental illness in her past and a murder accusation she’s tried a long time to forget may prove the key to unraveling the mystery. Only by accepting the ugly little demons she’s been seeing as her “family” can she save her life. Her eventual triumph over the Accuser, the thing that’s been trying to kill her, provides a lovely introduction to the world of demon politics.
In Demon Inside, Megan has to deal with the near-simultaneous loss of her partnership with the death of her father. At the same time, someone—or something—is killing her demons as well as demons in the other demon ‘families’, and she has to find out why before she has none left. Going home for her father’s funeral opens up emotional wounds that have never properly healed; her mother and brother are decidedly unhappy to see her, and even more so when they learn that Megan’s father left her the asylum where she was confined as a teenager. With Dante, witch friend Tera, and psychic friend Brian, she tries to figure out just who or what is behind the demon deaths, and not get killed while doing so.
Demon Possessed is the third book in Kane’s Megan Chase series. The series is sufficiently complex, with enough minor characters, that I wouldn’t recommend reading the third book without having tackled the other two first. However, when a series is this good, that’s hardly a burden.
The story opens with an F.B.I. agent visiting Megan, who is more than a little nervous. She realizes her anxiety is only appropriate when the agent starts asking questions about Dante, her demon lover. Although she refuses to answer any of the questions, the agent lets Megan know she will see her again.
As soon as the agent leaves, Megan’s next patient arrives, only to let her know he’s no quitting therapy. Megan’s day goes downhill from there.
Stacia Kane’s writing is excellent; realistic, complex characterization, gripping action sequences, and some of the hottest sex scenes I’ve ever read. She knows how to maintain reader interest through the course of a novel, and is good at developing plot threads to carry from one book to the next. Even the minor characters are distinct individuals: for example, the three Cockney bodyguard demons—Malleus, Maleficarum, and Spud—that Dante assigns to keep Megan safe, are all distinctive, with their own quirks. (And I’m not ashamed to admit I almost love them more than the main characters; I’m about ready to start a fan club for the three brothers!)
If I had any quibble with anything in the book, it would only be a minor one. Megan spent so much time in this novel feeling queasy and throwing up that I had myself convinced that she was pregnant, despite the fact that demons and humans can’t have children together. It did start to grate a little after awhile, much like Bella Swan’s non-stop klutziness in the Twilight novels, but by the end of the book, my irritation with the flaw had faded into the background, thoroughly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awesome that was the story’s finale.
Demon Possessed, like the other two books in the series, is compulsively readable; I breezed through its 321 pages in just under three hours, and read the prior two books just as quickly. Megan’s ongoing story is one that stands out from a great deal of the other urban fantasy on bookstore shelves by virtue of its emotional depth and likeableness. No word yet if there’ll be a fourth book (and more) in this series, but I’m really hoping there will be. In the meantime, the first book in Kane’s new series, Unholy Ghosts, will be coming out on May 25th, and as I’m thoroughly addicted to Kane’s writing, I’m looking to pick up a copy so I can feed the need.
If you enjoy riveting urban fantasy with a believable, flawed heroine and a smoking-hot hero, pick up Demon Possessed—hell, pick up the entire series. You’ll be glad you did.
The Bibliomaniac
Ye olde author (emphasis on the OLD) likes the weird and the strange, which explains most of her friends. Married, with two daughters, she has earned a B.A. in Literature and a B.S. in Criminal Justice. Her interests include reading and writing (of course!), gardening, poetry, comic books, herbalism, chocolate, tea, mythology and fairy tales, comparative theology and alternative religions, Celtic and darkwave music, role-playing games and LARPing, horror movies, hiking and camping, SF conventions, and the martial arts. She lives with her husband, her younger daughter, five cats, a dog, and a houseful of gargoyles somewhere east of Chicago. She can be contacted at BrigidsBlest @ yahoo.com.
profile
bibliomaniac, on March 24th, 2010 |
Supernatural: Heart of the Dragon by Keith R. A. DeCandido
Buy It Now: on Amazon.com
Description: When renegade angel Castiel alerts Sam and Dean to a series of particularly brutal killings in San Francisco’s Chinatown, they realize the Heart of the Dragon, an ancient evil of unspeakable power, is back! John Winchester faced the terrifying spirit 20 years ago, and the Campbell family fought it 20 years before that – can the boys succeed where their parents and grandparents failed?
This review is based on a free review copy received from the publisher/author.
The Bibliomaniac’s Review:  
Heart of the Dragon is a fascinating family reunion of a book. For those addicted to the show, it will further flesh out the fan’s knowledge of Sam and Dean’s father, John, and their mother’s parents, Deanna and Samuel Campbell.
The book begins a hundred years in the past in Japan, where a ronin samurai known as “Doragon Kokoro”, or “Heart of the Dragon”, is deceived and ultimately executed by the plot of a demon. The demon enslaves his soul to the purposes of Hell.
Fast-forward to now, where Sam and Dean find themselves drawn into an investigation dealing with the Heart of the Dragon. Their initial inquiries lead them to discover that—much to their surprise—this threat is one that both John Winchester, their father, and their mother Mary and her parents, Samuel and Deanna Campbell, have faced before.
The book is loosely broken into thirds, with the first two thirds laying out the past episodes where John and the Campbells dealt with the Heart of the Dragon. The final third of the book—as well as a chapter or so between these thirds—recount Sam and Dean’s own battle against the ghost.
It’s often hard not to be skeptical about the quality of media tie-in novels. Even when the author recruited to write the novel is one who’s written good original work in the past, they often find themselves constrained by the plot and character limitations of the media source (movie, TV show, videogame) they’re working from, and the result is less than stellar.
I’m happy to say that this isn’t the case here. The writing is smooth and compelling, the characters are well-rounded and easy to identify with even for those who haven’t seen any episodes of the show (although a newcomer to the series would miss a lot of the references to past history), and the villains of the piece—the ghost himself and his mortal descendant, who summons him to use him as a weapon—come across as three-dimensional rather than stiff cardboard cut-outs. The threat the brothers face isn’t world-shattering, but it’s sufficiently serious to warrant their attention, and getting a look at more of their family history is always a treat.
While this isn’t the best book I’ve ever read, it’s a lot better than I was expecting it to be, even as a fan of the television show. Best of all, DeCandido has written two prior Supernatural novels, so now I have the pleasure of finding and reading those, too.
The Bibliomaniac
Ye olde author (emphasis on the OLD) likes the weird and the strange, which explains most of her friends. Married, with two daughters, she has earned a B.A. in Literature and a B.S. in Criminal Justice. Her interests include reading and writing (of course!), gardening, poetry, comic books, herbalism, chocolate, tea, mythology and fairy tales, comparative theology and alternative religions, Celtic and darkwave music, role-playing games and LARPing, horror movies, hiking and camping, SF conventions, and the martial arts. She lives with her husband, her younger daughter, five cats, a dog, and a houseful of gargoyles somewhere east of Chicago. She can be contacted at BrigidsBlest @ yahoo.com.
profile
bibliomaniac, on February 28th, 2010 |
Buy It Now: on Amazon.com
Description: Toby Daye — a half-human, half-fae changeling — has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating to a “normal” life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world had other ideas…
Now her liege, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills, has asked Toby to go to the Country of Tamed Lightening to make sure all is well with his niece, Countess January O’Leary. It seems like a simple enough assignment — until Toby discovers that someone has begun murdering people close to January, and that if the killer isn’t stopped, January may be the next victim.
This review is based on a free review copy received from the publisher/author.
The Bibliomaniac’s Review:
I consider myself fairly lucky recently, in that I’ve had a long run of good books—some relatively so, and some by any standards that anyone alive could set—to enjoy of late. Being a pessimist (or realist, some might say) at heart, I keep waiting to get a truly awful book that’ll break that good run and make me hold my nose and make gagging noises and call up all my friends to make fun of it and write nasty comments on the author’s blog and finally recycle the pages to line my cats’ litter boxes with.
But it looks like I’m going to have to keep waiting, because I couldn’t find a thing about A Local Habitation to dislike or kvetch about.
I first met Toby Daye in the pages of Rosemary and Rue, the first book in the ongoing saga that bears the protagonist’s name. My review of that book can be found here at The Discriminating Fangirl, a few entries back, for those who are so inclined.
A Local Habitation picks up six months after the end of Rosemary and Rue, with Toby actually getting to kick back and enjoy herself for a change. The book opens with Toby escorting a couple of her friends to the train station. This seemingly-simple task is complicated by the fact that Toby and her friends are all blind drunk after a night of club-hopping. After she sees her friends off, Toby contemplates getting a cab to take her home and decides to walk, instead. Not very far along the way there, she runs into Tybalt, the King of Cats and leader of the local Cait Sidhe.
I want to pause here for a moment and say: Yum.
(I admit it: I’m an unabashed Tybalt fan, and I’m not the only one. I was very, very pleased to learn that there was more of him in this book to enjoy.)
Tybalt helps Toby to get home, a fact he’ll never let her live down (of course), and the next morning, Toby gets a visit from Sylvester Torquill, Duke of San Francisco and Toby’s liege lord, asking her to carry out a small service for him that leads into the main plot of the novel.
I’m not going to outline the novel here and give it all away. What I will say is that there are very few novels I look forward to with as much glee as I do each new Toby Daye novel—no small feat, when the series is less than a year old and comprises just two books so far. (I expect the same will become true of the Newsflesh trilogy—McGuire’s zombie apocalypse trilogy written under the pen name Mira Grant—when it hits the shelves.) The only other authors whose new works I await with such expectation are Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, which puts McGuire—IMO—in damned fine company.
I could gush for several pages about McGuire’s writing skills—and did, in the Rosemary and Rue review—but today, I’ll content myself with a single observation that leaves me particularly gleeful. McGuire has a deft hand at characterization, especially as regards differentiating dialogue between characters. There’s many a writer whose heroine or hero speaks pretty much the same as their villain of the deepest dye, and there are fewer authorial flaws guaranteed to make me throw the book against the nearest wall in outrage. That Toby speaks with a style different from Tybalt—and different from Duke Sylvester, or Quentin, her young associate, or April, the strangest druid this side of an oak forest—makes me want to send McGuire several boxes of Halloween-themed cupcakes via next-day FedEx in gratitude.
To be fair, I admit to being a sucker for all things Fae. This doesn’t mean that any book set in Faerie or with Fae characters gets a free pass from me; on the contrary, it means I hold them to a much higher standard. Not once does the writing here rely on stereotypes, clichés, or lazy plotting, putting her in the company of such writers as Melissa Marr, Holly Black, and yes, Neil Gaiman. I predict that, before very much more time passes, McGuire will be known as well as any of them.
September—the month that An Artificial Night, the next book in the Toby Daye series, is released—looks like an awful long time away.
But it’ll be worth the wait.
The Bibliomaniac
Ye olde author (emphasis on the OLD) likes the weird and the strange, which explains most of her friends. Married, with two daughters, she has earned a B.A. in Literature and a B.S. in Criminal Justice. Her interests include reading and writing (of course!), gardening, poetry, comic books, herbalism, chocolate, tea, mythology and fairy tales, comparative theology and alternative religions, Celtic and darkwave music, role-playing games and LARPing, horror movies, hiking and camping, SF conventions, and the martial arts. She lives with her husband, her younger daughter, five cats, a dog, and a houseful of gargoyles somewhere east of Chicago. She can be contacted at BrigidsBlest @ yahoo.com.
profile
|
Current Contests None at the moment, but keep checking back!
Link to TDF Want to link to TDF? Feel free to use one of these banners! Copy & paste the HTML code onto your website.
150x75
150x215
Review Policy Do you have a book that you'd like for us to review? Please read our review policy!
All reviews posted on The Discriminating Fangirl are honest. We do not promise positive reviews. We do promise that we will give our honest opinion about what we read.
Readers, please note that some of the reviews here at TDF are of books that we received for free from publishers or authors. As stated above, all of our reviews are honest, and the fact that we received a free copy does not mean that we give undeserved praise to these books. Copyright Information All original content copyright to The Discriminating Fangirl and its respective authors, 2007-2009.
Please do not reproduce posts in their entirety without written permission. You may quote sections of posts with attribution (i.e. attribute the quote to The Discriminating Fangirl & the quote's author, including a link to the original post).
|
