Someone’s Read it Already

Yes, it’s a Star Trek book. I thought I’d already established my nerdiness prior to this. However, note the author: Diane Duane not only wrote an episode or two of Star Trek: The Next Generation but I think even a couple episodes of Gargoyles (a cartoon that no one under the age of 20 probably remembers, but it was Disney and most of the voice actors were from ST:TNG (1)) and at least one other ST:TOS book other than this one. Oh, and also So You Want to be a Wizard? and its myriad sequels, a standard of the YA fantasy genre. She lives in Ireland with her husband, fantasy author Peter Morwood, who apparently writes big ol’ Irish-inspired epics.

The plot’s pretty simple: Vulcan is having a debate over whether to stay in the Federation or leave it. Spock, Kirk, and McCoy have been called to Vulcan to assist in the debates on the side of staying in the Federation (obviously) but Sarek, Spock’s father and the Vulcan Ambassador to the Federation/Earth, is called to speak on the side of withdrawing from the Federation. (more…)

Stephanie Laurens lives in a completely different hemisphere from me, and hits best-seller lists with pretty much every book she produces. She has written, oh, approximately 40 volumes of historical romance, including the sprawling Bar Cynster series, which has expanded to include in-laws, friends, and people who are almost entirely unrelated to the original six Cynster cousins. She started a side series, based on an old novel called Captain Jack’s Woman, regarding seven or so gentlemen, all friends, who have come back from the Napoleonic Wars and realized that, well, they need wives. Neatly sidestepping any possibility of PTSD, each of these gentlemen has either recently come into a large fortune, a title, or both (generally both), and would be a major catch on the Marriage Mart, if they weren’t almost entirely certain to avoid it. This is the last book in the Bastion series, and kind of a bonus story: the boss of the other gentlemen, the mysterious Dalziel.

I’m cutting plot discussion, just in case Dalziel’s identity isn’t known to those reading this review. (more…)

Suzanne Enoch loves Star Wars to a rather unreasonable degree, which I very much appreciate. She writes primarily historical, Regency-era romance novels, with a second contemporary series floating around. I discovered her from an anthology of stories related to Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, called Lady Whistledown Strikes Back. These are two books that bookend the “Lessons in Love” trilogy, but they form an interesting pair, being that the heroes are a pair of brothers, and what happens in the second volume isn’t necessary to know to read the third. They even come after a related volume whose title I’ve forgotten, but I’ll Google it when I’m not in Torts class. (Ahh. A Matter of Scandal.)

At the ends of their wits, one day three young women become frustrated with the general quality of the young, eligible men in the ton, and determine to teach three of them — one each — lessons. In The Rake, the first volume, Lady Georgianna Halley decides to instruct Tristan Carroway, Viscount Dare, with whom she has had an adversarial relationship for the last eight years. Of course, their adversarial relationship is masking the fact that there’s a deep attraction there. A year or so later, Lucinda Barrett, the last of the three friends, realizing that the other two ended up marrying the objects of their lessons (oh, come on, not a spoiler), chooses Lord Geoffrey Newcombe. Lord Geoffrey, aside from being handsome, is safe and her father, General Barrett, likes him. Unfortunately, Robert Carroway, Tristan’s younger brother, has sort of gotten in the way . . . (more…)

This is one of Ms. Quinn’s earlier works; it was published quite a long time before Mr. Cavendish, I Presume? and The Lost Duke of Wyndham I reviewed a few weeks ago. It’s actually a sequel to Everything and the Moon, featuring a Miss Victoria Lyndon and the Earl of Macclesfield. Ms. Quinn is an Ivy League graduate; her husband seems to find her career as a best-selling romance novelist both cool and highly amusing, evidenced by his random suggestions for titles. Her main series of books was the eight-volume Bridgerton series; I strongly suspect I can not only name the titles for each volume but the main Bridgerton involved, but I don’t think I’ll try.*

This is, as the introductory note says, Julia Quinn’s marriage-of-convenience story. Two weeks before his time runs out, Charles, Earl of Billingsley, falls out of a tree onto Miss Ellie Lyndon, the sister of Miss Victoria Lyndon and a vicar’s daughter. Due to some vague attraction and the determination that she might not be so bad to be married to, he explains the situation — if he doesn’t marry in the next two weeks, he loses all of the monetary portion of his inheritance. Ellie understands this, being that she’s in her own monetary difficulties — she’s been investing her pocket money and cannot get to it. (Also, there’s an Evil Stepmother involved.) So they have a go of it. Will it work? (more…)

Ahh, Tanya Huff. Author of the Blood books, turned into the short-lived Blood Ties series. Author of the Smoke books, starring a character who was from the Blood books but got cut from the TV show. Author of the Valor’s Choice series of novels that I haven’t actually read, but I know they’re SF with a nice strong female lead. She also wrote The Fire’s Stone, Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light (one of my favorites), the Keeper books, and the novels of Crystal, together in a volume called Wizard of the Grove. Also a bunch of collections of short stories. Seriously, with this much published, it’s kind of amazing that there are spec-fic fans who haven’t read SOMETHING of hers.

The Enchantment Emporium is set in a new universe, just a bit removed from our own (or maybe it IS our own) where there’s a family of powerful women, surnamed Gale, who nudge the universe around by immense personal ability. Alysha Catherine Gale (Allie), our heroine, is twenty-four, jobless, and single when her grandmother (the family’s black sheep) gives her a store to run — the eponymous Enchantment Emporium. However, that means moving away from the family, out to Calgary. Obviously they can come visit, but apparently everyone is too busy actually to come with her. And then the strange things start happening — a tabloid reporter (very attractive, by the way) comes by, dragons start flying over the store, and faerie beings start showing up. What has Gran gotten Allie into? (more…)

Sherry Thomas is a relatively recent entrant into the world of historical romance; her first published novel, Private Arrangements, I reviewed a mere year and a half ago, here. She’s a current resident of Texas, but she moved to the US from China at the age of thirteen and apparently had a taste for historical romance even then. This work is her second novel; she’s since published a third, entitled Not Quite a Husband. A fourth, called His at Night, is to be released next May. I believe that the secondary lead in Delicious and the lead in Not Quite a Husband are brothers, but it doesn’t seem to be necessary to read one before the other.

Verity Durand is the most famous — and infamous — chef in England. Famous, because her food makes angels weep and grown men slaver; infamous because, well, she had an affair with her last employer, Bertie Somerset. Of course, Mr. Somerset has since died and his younger half-brother, Stuart, has inherited the entire place, including Verity’s services — as a chef, of course. Stuart Somerset is a politician; originally a barrister, he’s now an MP and holds the ear of the Prime Minister; he works twenty-four hour days trying to get bills past. He rarely has time to eat, let alone enjoy his food. Oh, and he’s engaged to a Miss Lizzy Bessler. However, ten years ago, he had one amazing night with a lady he’s never seen since, despite searching. Only a totally crazy situation would throw them back together . . . wouldn’t it? (more…)

Yes, I’m reviewing the 15th (arguably; I don’t count Micah) volume in a series without reviewing the previous volumes. For one thing, everyone else has dealt with the series quite adequately. Second, I can gloss the plot up to this point in about three sentences. Laurell K. Hamilton arguably perfected the genre of the kickass chick with serious emotional issues who sleeps with various supernatural beings (vampires, werewolves, oh my) with a gun under her pillow. She started writing these books in the early-to-mid-1990s and while the last, say, five or six volumes have been of varying quality, there’s still a new one every year or so. This year’s release is Skin Trade (vol. 16).

Here’s the general setup of the series: We have Anita Blake, the short, assertive, overly-weaponed necromancer (zombie-raiser)/vampire hunter. More under the cut, actually, in case there’s a person left in the world who hasn’t read these books who wants to. (more…)

I decided to read this book after I read a companion short story that the author posted on her blog; that story is available here. Reading the story doesn’t require knowledge of the book, and vice versa; however, it will fill in a few bits of backstory that may be interesting to some readers. Sarah Rees Brennan, who is Irish, just turned twenty-six, which makes her a smidge over a year younger than I am, and has an MA in writing. This is her first published novel, and it’s the opening of a trilogy.

Nick and Alan are brothers and have been on the run from a coven of evil magicians (all magicians are evil; they feed people to demons) for a very long time now. When a classmate of Nick’s (named Jamie) gets into some possibly supernatural trouble, his sister Mae asks around and finds out that Nick and Alan are the ones to talk to. Unfortunately, of course, Nick and Alan have problems of their own; the coven is about to find them. Unfortunately, Jamie and Mae end up caught up in their drama. Just why are these magicians after Nick and Alan? And why does it seem like Alan is hiding things from his brother? (more…)

A few days ago I reviewed the first book in this series and expressed my desire to read more. Fortunately, there are (at this point) four books in the series, and I am currently in possession of all of them. (I am also confused as to why they decided to redesign the series starting with book 4. I like it when all volumes in a series match, but apparently other people don’t care as much.) Ms. Hoffman, a Cambridge and University College London graduate, has been writing for children for nearly forty years now; this series has won awards and other kinds of recognition from various sources, including a 2009 nomination for a Carnegie medal for the fourth volume (City of Secrets).

Georgia O’Grady, a twenty-first-century fifteen-year-old English schoolgirl, is more likely to be mistaken for an English schoolboy, with her short, spiky hair, indifferent manner of dressing, and pre-adolescent figure. She’s also horse-mad, and when she finds a winged horse figurine in an antiques store, she saves up for and buys it. Of course, it turns out to be a Stravagating talisman, and she falls asleep and finds herself in Talia. She ends up in a stable in Remora, an analogue for Siena, and they mistake her for a boy, renaming her Giorgio Gredi. There, she finds herself swept up in the annual horse race, to be held shortly. Of course, though, because she is a Stravagante and this is Talia, there’s more going on than just a simple horse race . . . (more…)

Apparently The Dream Thief was Amazon.com’s #1 Romance of the Year, and the first book in this series, The Smoke Thief (review here) was RT (Romantic Times)’s #1 Historical Romance of the Year (presumably in different years). The Drakon series is up to four books now; the third volume is entitled Queen of Dragons and the fourth is The Treasure-Keeper. There’s at least one more planned after that, but I can’t find a title. Yet. I’ll report it when I do. Shana Abe has a Tchouvatch dog which apparently is large and white and sheds a lot, and a house full of rabbits, mostly rescued.

This is a book 2, so I’ll cut here. (more…)