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. Anyway, Anita’s up to something like five or six permanent boyfriends and another dozen rotating ones. The permanent ones include Jean-Claude, Master of the City of St. Louis (i.e., head vampire); Micah, the other head of the wereleopard pack; Nathaniel, another wereleopard; Asher, Jean-Claude’s second-in-command (another vampire); Damian, Anita’s pet vampire (a long story, found in another volume), and, maybe, Richard, the head of the werewolf pack. She now carries about five different strains of lycanthropy, even though she doesn’t shift shapes, and in addition to being the lupa (sort of) of the werewolf pack (and the Bolverk), she’s the queen of the leopards. She’s also arguably got some vampire powers, being that she has managed to ‘inherit’ Jean-Claude’s ardeur, the need to/ability to feed off of sex the way that most vampires feed off of blood. (i.e., she’s arguably a succubus, but not as cool as Georgina.) Because of that, she can make men become addicted to her. She still occasionally hunts things.

So in the current volume, Anita has decided to pretend to be Jason’s girlfriend while Jason goes to visit his dying father. (Jason is one of the rotating boyfriends; also generally just a friend of Anita’s since book 3.) Jason’s family is dead convinced that he’s gay, despite legions of ex-girlfriends, and apparently the presence of a girlfriend might ease the father’s passing. However, everything goes pear-shaped because Jason looks almost exactly like the governor’s son — who is getting married this weekend. Apparently the idea that said governor’s son (named Keith) could be spending time with a pretty brunette instead of his blond fiancee isn’t too far off of reality, and the media gets involved . . . and then Marmee Noir, the biggest, baddest, oldest vampire of ‘em all gets involved . . .

The disputed volume in the series is Micah, which came between volumes 12 and 13. At one point, Ms. Hamilton was going to write shorter novels, exploring the relationships between Anita and each of the individual males she’s shacking up with. I think the genesis of this plot was actually Jason’s volume, because, well, she does all she can to get Anita and Jason isolated — in North Carolina, even. (I’ve been there; it really is that pretty, but I don’t remember it being quite that messed up.) She may have changed the ending in order to get in stuff that’s relevant to the overarching plot of the series (such as it is), but basically, this is Jason and Anita and some talk therapy.

It’s sort of become the fashion to bash the Anita Blake books for having too much sex and too little plot, and while there wasn’t much plot in this volume, there really wasn’t much sex, either. Oh, enough, certainly, in terms of number of sex acts had over the course of the three or four days the book spans (I lost count), but most of them are barely described. Nothing like the 14-page epic sex scenes dating as far back as The Killing Dance (vol. 6). I like the mysteries, when they’re real mysteries, and Anita really didn’t have any investigating to do in this book. There was a moderate amount of danger, but if the book has almost no mystery plot and barely any sex, what’s left? Anita chatting with Jason about their respective screwed-up childhoods?

Another flaw of the last few volumes is Ms. Hamilton’s need to find greater and greater dangers. In the third volume (Circus of the Damned), we met and killed the world’s oldest vampire. Apparently she didn’t think about that one too hard, because now we’ve got the Mother of All Vampires, who may or may not be older than the previous guy, but is definitely scarier. This need to find something scarier and scarier in each book is causing her world-building to get more and more unwieldy, as she stretches certain points in order to put Anita in more and more danger. Of course, the more danger Anita gets into, the greater her powers have to be in order to handle that danger, and that’s why Anita apparently joined the Power of the Month club. (No, I didn’t originate that phrase. I can’t remember who did, though. Sorry.) In this book, she grabbed another animal to call and discovered that because of a combination of powers she already had, she’s even more powerful. I’d yawn, but it’s too tedious even for that.

Also, and this is a comparatively tiny nitpick, there’s a really, really simple explanation as to why Jason’s family thinks he’s gay, but she never used it. She did tell us that his sister swore she saw him having sex with another man, but he tells us he was somewhere else. So who did the sister see? Oh, well, the answer’s sort of there between the lines, but she never states it. It sort of felt like a loose end to me.

Why do I keep reading these books? Heck, until Blood Noir, I was BUYING them, in nice expensive hardbacks. Well, it’s because they’re addicting. Anita’s love life, and frankly even her professional life, is a trainwreck, but you can’t look away. Ms. Hamilton’s somewhat choppy writing style just sucks readers in, as if they haven’t left the world for over a year (as I did). The sex, when it’s present and Ms. Hamilton is writing in full form, is hot. It really is. It’s almost as euphemistic as romance novels and sometimes involves numbers and combinations and scenarios that might push the boundaries for some readers, but it’s still hot. Her characters are compulsively interesting, even if they’re all unnaturally beautiful and their flaws are of the sort that make you think they’re even more perfect. Anita has a thing for hurt/comfort sort of scenarios, and all the men in her flock seem to be broodingly gorgeous with deep pools of pain in their souls. They almost make me want to write bad emo-goth poetry, but fortunately I’m not fourteen, the way I was when I read the first of these. But they’re still hot.

Anyway, if you’re sort of insanely addicted, this might provide a decent hit until you can get a copy of the latest volume, which I’ve heard has a real plot and investigating and all that stuff, but it’s absolutely not worth it if you aren’t already hooked. I’m not sure the book even deserves a rating. The series overall started at 4/5 and has devolved to maybe in the 2.5 or 3-star range. I will say, though, that the first few volumes are pretty good, but I caution against reading them because it may make you compulsively want to read the rest of them, and then you’ll smack up against Micah, for which I’d like that hour of my life and $7 back, and Incubus Dreams, which may have had a plot but I’ve forgotten in between all the sex, and this one, which, as I’ve noted above, isn’t quite plotty enough to be decent and doesn’t have enough sex to be interesting in that way.

Paula is Jena’s younger sister, the scholarly, studious one. She has been helping her father with many of his business matters, and dreams of starting her own rare-book collection. When he mentions that he is going to travel to wherever-it-is, Paula immediately clamors to go along — and is allowed. For in the city, there is a woman named Irene who has her own scholarly haven for women, and Paula would like to study there. They get to town, hire a bodyguard for Paula, and she begins her studies — but something is strange about the piece they have come to town to buy, called Cybele’s Gift. Many people are after it, and things are starting to happen — attacks, sudden withdrawals from the bidding, and the involvement of strange individuals including a pirate . . .

Our setting, for this volume of the story, is Istanbul, and we are still in the eighteenth century, as far as I could tell. It’s a great time and place to set a book; many things are all converging between the Eastern and Western worlds in that area at that time. The history of the Ottoman Empire is so rich, and Ms. Marillier didn’t even mine a significant percent of it. She didn’t need to — she set out to write a story about a merchant, his daughter, and an exotic, possibly magical piece, and wove in realistic details without overencumbering the story with the entire weight of Turkish civilization. However, Ms. Marillier included excellent details about being a woman at that time in that city, and I found them captivating.

The plot isn’t thoroughly novel; it’s sort of a puzzle story mixed with a love triangle wrapped up in some goddess lore. While it draws on many sources, though, it manages to take all the elements and mix them togehter into something that’s entirely its own. The puzzle story had enough detail to keep me interested (another example of a common puzzle story would be anything by Dan Brown), although not enough that I had figured everything out by the end. The love story was enchanting, and the goddess lore read as quite logical to me. While she isn’t that well-known, Cybele is actually a Phrygian earth/mother goddess sort who was worshipped in the Mediterranean in the past.

I liked Paula, a lot, but I’ve always liked truly brainy, bookish female characters. (What? I identify with them? No, really?) I’m sort of disappointed to realize that even if Ms. Mariller writes another book featuring this family, it will not be focused on Paula herself. Her swains — the pirate and the bodyguard — are also both interesting in their own ways. Paula’s father is much more interesting in this volume than in Wildwood Dancing, but that is most likely because he’s actually on stage for a larger percentage of the book. Irene, the Greek scholar, has quite a few secrets, and managed to retain my interest because of them.

This book has, as I’ve detailed above, a wonderfully exotic setting, a fascinating twist on a common plot, a great love story, interesting characters, and a satisfying resolution. In other words, I loved it, and I have no hesitation in giving it 5/5 stars.

Felix Gomez is in the U.S. military, and while he is in Iraq, he comes back with what he tells people is “Operation Iraqi Freedom Syndrome.” Except it’s nothing of the sort; he got vampirism instead. Fortunately, some of the weaknesses of being a vampire can be mitigated by 21st-century technology, such as Dermablend and high-octane sunscreen. Now Gomez is a P.I., and one of his old friends from college has called him up to find out why something very strange has happened at his DOE base (i.e., somewhere where they do nuclear research) — the women appear to have been infected with something that is causing them to be, ahem, hyper-interested in a certain sort of physical activity. Can Gomez figure it out? And why are vampires in the area dying?

I absolutely admit that I misjudged this story, prior to reading it, because of the title. I thought it would be significantly more misogynist. It wasn’t — I don’t think any women were even killed, and while the nymphomania did, of course, only affect the women (at least at first), that was not because of any inherent flaw in women; it wasn’t particularly explained, but it certainly wasn’t their fault. The female characters of note — Wendy and Carmen — weren’t so bad; while they weren’t that well-developed as characters, that was mostly the limitations of the plot, the first-person narrative, and the main character being, well, a guy’s guy more than anything else.

The new twists on vampirism I generally didn’t mind. The contact lenses (to hide the reflective layer in the back of the eye, like a wolf) constantly being removed and, presumably, thrown out was decently done, although having worn soft contact lenses myself, I know it takes more than a millisecond to get them in or out — even if you’re good at it. Perhaps vampiric reflexes make the suction factor less of a problem. I actually liked the makeup-and-sunscreen idea, although I understand it has its problems. (For example, one’s scalp, or one’s eyes, or the inside of one’s mouth.) Dumping blood over food in order to eat it (and being required to eat non-blood food) took a little more suspension of disbelief. I didn’t consider it beyond belief, certainly (unlike, say, the sparkles), but it was a bit more of a stretch than makeup and sunscreen. The blood thing turned out to be nothing, in terms of suspension of disbelief, as far as the plot was concerned, but I will say no more.

Mr. Acevedo has created a convincing and interesting character in Felix Gomez; I’d be quite interested to read future books in the series. He has just barely scratched the surface of the setup of the vampire world in his reality, and the paranormal world, as well. The government involvement, as well, was intriguing and thought-provoking; I believe he’ll be able to mine that territory for many more plot ideas. The titles will certainly draw some readers in, although probably not the right kind. I’d recommend it to those who preferred the plot over the sex in the Laurell K. Hamilton books, and fans of other urban fantasy authors such as Kelley Armstrong and Jim Butcher. 4/5 stars.

Rachel Chapman is a photographer; as a single mom, she traveled around the world with her daughter Sophie for thirteen years, until, during a brief time settled in San Francisco, Sophie’s best friend Tessa was murdered. That event spooked Rachel so much that she decided to get married and settle down so that Sophie would have a safe rest of her childhood. Enter David Middleton, an English professor on sabbatical — charming, mild-mannered, smart, and a little bland, but attentive and, above all, safe — or so Rachel thinks. Some months after they return to his hometown of Silver Falls, Washington, another young woman — or three — are murdered, coincidentally right after David’s black-sheep brother Caleb returns to town. Is it a coincidence? If not, then why is Caleb so devilishly attractive?

Spoilers behind the cut. They’re always possible, but in this case, I’m telling you that there are definitely some there.

The jig is up fairly early in the book; probably fifty pages in, the reader should know enough to solve the mystery. However, as has been pointed out (especially in the comments on this review at Dear Author), Ms. Stuart had the choice of leaving it as a mystery and making the romantic aspects of the book really, really creepy (instead of just mildly creepy) or to give us enough clues early on and make the dramatic irony the strong point to let the romance develop a little more. Before I go on, though, let me make this clear: this is a serial-killer book. Fortunately, it has very little on the “early life and education of the killer” aspect, and there is very little on-screen killing — just once, as a matter of fact, although a lot of threats and menacing.

My favorite character was Sophie, the thirteen-year-old math genius daughter. Her relationship with her mother is vaguely reminiscent, to me, of the father-daughter relationship shown in the TV series “Castle” — although in some ways the daughter grew up early, not a bit of it seems to be detrimental to either girl’s psyche. The fact that Sophie (and her friend Kristen) are shown as being incredibly resilient — not to mention a bit gory-minded, wanting to know details of the case and not being traumatized by hearing them — was also refreshing. Not all girls stand on chairs and shriek when they see rats, and I found Sophie and Kristen to be awfully authentic depictions of a certain kind of thirteen-year-old girl.

I was also quite fond of the aforementioned Kristen’s mother, Maggie Bannister, the sheriff. She wasn’t over-the-top hard-as-nails, the way that some fictional female police officers can be, and she seemed to be able to find a good balance between being a mother and an officer of the law. Of the other characters, David to me sort of automatically looked like Michael C. Hall, who plays a ‘good’ serial killer named Dexter in the eponymous series, but more importantly played a mild-mannered, control-freak character named David in Six Feet Under,” another HBO series. (David’s motivations were entirely different, though.) I found him awfully creepy, frankly, even when he first showed up. His brother Caleb always reminded me of a wolf, although I don’t remember Ms. Stuart using that description, and their father was so perfectly himself that I found it impossible to dislike him.

Rachel walked the narrow line between willful blindness and being TSTL (too stupid to live). I really wanted to believe the best of her — that she was ignoring all the little things that seemed to be wrong or inconsistent out of a combination of deep-seated emotional wounds and fear, but once in a while I wondered about her. A good deal of the plot hinges on Rachel not knowing certain things, and although it may be frustrating for the reader, that’s where the drama and the tension build. I’m not exactly sure if I can detail any of the other things I liked about the book without giving away too much (yes, more than I’ve already given away), but I’ll conclude by saying that I would only recommend reading this during daylight hours, and that overall I found the romance believable but I’m certain that the hero and the heroine will not have the prettiest happily-ever-after; they’re both too strong-willed for that. 4/5 stars, and recommended for fans of romantic suspense and serial-killer stories.

The stories in this volume include: “The Night Garden,” by Mark Onspaugh; “Debts,” by Amanda Pillar; “Under the Chocolate Tree,” by David E. Hilton; “Floaters,” by Michael S. Bumagin, M.D.; “Burden of Proof,” by Jennifer Graham; “A Rustle of Curtains,” by Henry Leon Lazarus; “Pas de Deux,” by Edward McKeown; “Defender,” by Garry Ward; “Expiration Date Not Required,” by A. D. Nailor; “Lazuli,” by Christine Rains; “1-800-VAMPYRE,” by Bob Nailor; “The Vampire Doll,” by Joette Razanski; “Days and Nights,” by Elyse Salpeter; “Down in the Cellar,” by Joe McKinney; “Barney,” by James R. Cain; “Tales of the Vampire,” by Mitchel Whitington; and “Give Until it Kills,” by Joe Sergi.

If anyone needed a grown-up antidote to that book, this is it. The stories range from comedic to horrific to historical to mysterious to weird. In no story is a vampire considered sexy, mysterious, and wonderful just for being a vampire, and in no story does a high school student decide to throw away the entire rest of her life just because the most mysterious boy in school decided to look at her. Yes, vampires are love interests in a few of the tales, and one that I can remember even has a happy ending, but overall these are not the sexy vampires that pervade YA and urban fantasy literature. These vampires have variety.

We have vampire hunters of a few different flavors; in the first story, a group of tough men have decided to form a vampire hunting company with hopes of turning it into a reality show. In another story, a young woman who had been bitten by a vampire as a child becomes a vampire slayer as an adult, and other stories involve underground organizations of vampire slayers. One is the Templars, back to save us again (that particular story, “Pas de Deux,” feels like a sequel to something that may even have been in the first volume and piqued my interest) and another is just a secular organization, but a fascinating one.

The second-to-last story in the book, “Tales of the Vampire,” is about a pair of vampires who long for the good old days, when they got to munch on people instead of ordering blood off the internet, and they attempt to recreate these times. Their results are horrific and hilarious at the same time, and it was one of my favorite tales. Another story stood out because of the twist at the end, but I hate to even tell what the title is because it would give too much away. Garry Ward’s straight-up historical tale was unique for the volume, and it very much felt like his characters were part of a much larger tapestry he has in his head. Overall, while some of the stories weren’t as polished as the tales in other collections and there were some interesting typos (the spine says “More Legend of the Vampire”), the volume shows a great variety of skills and imagination, and it’s certainly worth a look. 4/5 stars.

In the mid-1960s, a group of high school friends fall under the influence of a magician-philosopher-charlatan named Spencer Mallon. The influence ends abruptly a few months later when something horrific happens, but nobody can quite determine what actually occurred. The fifth member of the group, who was not involved but was still friends with the bunch, is a famous writer, and while trying to write his memoirs, gets stuck dead at the point when the ‘something horrific’ happened. More than anything, he needs to find out what that event was, and so he finds his old friends, to figure his past out.

I had never read anything by Mr. Straub before this book, so I was unprepared when what appeared (by the back cover copy and the first hundred and some-odd pages of the book) to be a supernatural thriller similar to Graham Joyce’s Dreamside turned into a serial-killer story. I’m not a big fan of serial killers, although I’ll read other kinds of horror; demons, vampires, werewolves, and zombies don’t exist, but serial killers do, and they’re human. So I feel that I should warn readers: this book contains some fairly graphic descriptions of the early days of a serial killer or two, and as such contains violence to animals. Those who prefer not to read that sort of thing would do best to avoid this book. In truth, it’s just one section that is exceptionally creepy, but it’s enough that I’m warning about it.

That having been said, Mr. Straub is a masterful writer. He has complete control over the story, even this unedited version, and control over the various voices of different characters. He gets intensely into the mind of so many of his characters, and while many of them are unlikable (the serial killer, the thief, the grasping social climber), the others are appealing, even in an odd way (the insane guy, the luminous blind woman, the mostly-blank author-POV character, and the con man). It does appear that the women in his story are either angels or she-devils, but considering that all the characters are essentially archetypes, I won’t fault him for that.

The book is written in an interesting format; the main flashback sections of the plot (with the exception of the serial-killer section) are the various characters telling what they know about the night in question, and the events leading up to it. Most of them have different recollections of what happened, and not all of them make perfect linear sense. In these sections are where Mr. Straub’s voice-control shines, and while I’m not exactly leaping to meet most of the characters again, I did find my introductions to them quite pleasant. A little research shows that many of Mr. Straub’s main characters are writers, and although I don’t think that he particularly imbued Lee Harwell with much of his own personality, I suppose it does show that often, people do write what they know.

This is definitely a horror novel with fantastic elements, rather than being any of several other precise gradations of the field. Those who don’t generally read horror novels, or who read dark fantasy, might find this a bit too strong for their tastes. (I did.) However, it’s a fast-paced, exciting read, despite all the point-of-view switching and the fascination on one particular night, and fans of Mr. Straub’s will be quite intrigued to compare both versions. I’d recommend it to horror and serial-killer-book fans; those who liked both Darkside (Graham Joyce) and perhaps a good deal of Stephen King would enjoy this title immensely. 4.5/5 stars.

M is for Magic is a collection of his already-published stories that he put together for children; the title, as he says in the introduction, is after Ray Bradbury’s similarly-collected (already published and picked for children later) works with titles such as R is for Rocket and S is for Space. The titles include “The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds,” “Troll Bridge,” “Don’t Ask Jack,” “How to Sell the Ponti Bridge,” “October in the Chair,” “Chivalry,” “The Price,” “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” and “Sunbird,” as well as “The Witch’s Headstone,” which is an excerpt from The Graveyard Book.

I have one major issue with this collection, which has nothing to do with Mr. Gaiman himself or his writing: the packaging. This is a 260-page collection, printed with large fonts and large margins, with a juvenile title (what child is going to recognize the homage to Bradbury?) and a non-descript cover. Overall, if I’d just picked it up, I’d say it was intended for middle-grade readers (grades 4-8ish, ages 9-14). Having actually perused the contents, though, I can say that it should be intended for YA readers (grades 7-12ish, ages 12-18). Many of the stories allude to sex or anatomy, and while I’m willing to forgive a fair amount of violence because he states that many of the stories are horror stories, I don’t think most fifth-graders would even be interested in the story about a guy hoping to get lucky with a girl at a party who turns out to be an alien.

If this collection was intended for YAs, I assume it would look more like Charles de Lint’s Viking-published collection, Waifs and Strays. There are more stories, in smaller fonts; not only does it take up more space, but the cover was done by the same person who does most of his adult covers.

In any case, as an adult, I found the contents generally delightful. Mr. Gaiman as usual manages to include diverse themes, interesting character types, and odd-twist endings. One of my favorites was the story entitled “Sunbird,” about an epicurean club that is convinced that they have eaten everything that there ever was to eat. Their descriptions of which foods they preferred were quite amusing (apparently fruit bat tastes like sweet guinea pig), and I liked the interplay of the five different club members. And no, actually, the epicurean club does not decide to practice cannibalism. That would be far too simple for one of Mr. Gaiman’s stories.

The excerpt from The Graveyard Book, which was published as a sort of standalone short story in 2007, was quite interesting, but I think even if I didn’t know that it was part of a longer work, that I would have suspected. There was too much backstory — too many hints of what came before and what would come after. Of course, it did whet my appetite for reading the full version, and although I do agree a bit with Stephen Colbert that on first blush the story doesn’t sound like a children’s story, I figure I should at least give it a chance. Some children are quite capable of handling levels of horror that many adults don’t care for (see: how many children start reading Stephen King in elementary school), and after all, I’m not actually in the business of censorship.

The other stories are quite interesting as well; each had a quirky interpretation of fantastic or fairy-tale elements that I’ve come to associate with his works. I did find the choice to end the book with a poem a little strange. It was the same poem that was included in A Wolf at the Door, and the only poem in the collection. Being that it was at the end and after the longest work in the book, I found it incredibly easy to skip. As a reader, I thought the book would have ended more strongly if it would have ended with “The Witch’s Headstone.” Overall, though, adults and horror-minded YAs should enjoy this volume very might, and might immediately choose to follow it up with The Graveyard Book. 4.5/5 stars.

This collection of short stories includes apparently 41 of his biggest and best tales, ranging from one of his first published works (“Deep Without Pity”) to three stories that had web debuts within the last couple years (“Straws,” “Golfing Vietnam,” “Fear Itself”). The tales range from a couple of punk westerns, a few pulp-type stories, straight-up science fiction, ultra-short literary fiction, a few that were intended for men’s magazines, and, of course, a few tales about rock ‘n’ roll. I won’t list all 41 titles, as that would take too much time, but interested readers can haunt the Sub Press website until they post the table of contents. This book will be published at the end of November this year.

Three of the stories are connected, as they are all about a Vietnam vet P.I. named Dan Sloane. Not many of the rest have characters that travel between stories, although there are many themes that resonate through his work. Mr. Shiner even comments in the author’s notes for a story called “Jeff Beck” that “[i]f there’s such a thing as a typical Shiner story, this is it: a magic wish that doesn’t work out; a troubled marriage; rock ‘n’ roll; and a big dose of working-class angst.” Quite often, elements from his own life story (there’s a giant autobiography on his website) show up in his stories. The story “Match” nearly happened; the main character in his novel Glimpses has a father who died the same way that Mr. Shiner’s father did. Many of his characters have unhappy marriages (he went through two), as well. One story — “Kidding Around” — is actually about someone else’s family, a writing student of his. (He obviously wrote the story with her permission.)

The last story in the book, “Lizard Men of Los Angeles,” Mr. Shiner describes (in his author’s notes on the story) as his favorite of all the stories he’s written. It’s a pulp-type story commissioned originally by Joe Lansdale, set in 1934 Los Angeles (obviously), and including Aleister Crowley, spontaneous human combustion, a stage magician and his beautiful assistant, a former child star turned ingenue, and, of course, lizard men. I loved the tone of the story; in fitting with the pulp sensibility, it was definitely tongue-in-cheek, and yet serious at the same time. I suspect that I need to read more pulp fiction, or at least the modern homages to pulp fiction. I’d really love to read more about Johnny Cairo and Mrs. Lockhart, although I doubt that any more is forthcoming.

Overall, this is an amazing collection; I would definitely recommend it for fans of his other works, and fans of short fiction such as John Crowley, Jai Claire, and even Charles de Lint, although his tone is not nearly as gentle. There’s something for nearly everyone, and while there are often violent and unpleasant events and even quite a few unlikable characters (or at least hypothetically unlikable ones), overall there’s enough to balance the novel. There’s even a children’s story, “Mark the Bunny,” which has some obvious socialist overtones, and although I wouldn’t recommend the collection as a whole for children, the story’s really hilarious for adults. 5/5 stars.

This is a sequel, and although I never read the first book, I’m cutting the plot discussion anyway. The Living Blood centers around two children, Fana and Jared, and their parents and families. Fana’s mother is Jessica Jacobs-Wolde, who is apparently infamous in Miami for having been married to David Wolde, the serial killer. He killed several people, but most notably their older daughter, Kira. Fana was conceived but not yet born at the time, and she is showing some strange abilities. Jared is the son of Dr. Lucas Shepherd, a microbiologist who has been studying alternative medicine for a number of years. Jared is dying of leukemia, and his father will do anything to find a cure. After Kira’s death, Jessica and her sister Alice moved to Africa, to start a clinic for children in the middle of a non-developed area. They apparently have some sort of miracle cure out there, and Lucas will do anything to get it.

Apparently this is a sequel to My Soul to Keep, but I didn’t know that prior to about a minute ago as the book didn’t indicate it in any way. I didn’t even have the feeling that there was an incredible amount of backstory, but apparently there was. Readers who read The Living Blood first will unfortunately have the entire plot of My Soul to Keep spoiled for them. I still wouldn’t mind reading it, as it might be interesting to watch the story unfold even though I know the ending. Also, of course, I very much enjoyed Ms. Due’s writing and characters, and it would be quite interesting to re-enter the world, if a bit backwards.

Jessica is an interesting character; she deals with her de facto immortality fairly well, but her daughter Fana unsettles her a bit. (And by ‘a bit,’ I mean ‘a lot.’) Fana was born laughing, which is strange enough as it is but a common element from folk tales. She’s three and a half years old for the majority of the book, and she has all sorts of strange abilities — she makes it rain; she can hear thoughts; she even puts someone into a coma with just the power of her mind. Frankly, any one of those things would make a normal mother incredibly freaked-out. The fact that Fana has a lot more power than even David or any of his fellow immortals clearly would make anyone nervous, and I thought that Jessica’s feelings were well-done and entirely natural.

Parts of this book deal with race in interesting ways. The majority of the characters are African-American. Yes, the bad guys are white in general but the worst of ‘em all isn’t. Some of the good guys are white, as well. Lucas’s wife was white, and he is light-skinned, so his son looks white. When he goes to Africa, he’s treated with a measure of suspicion by the locals, even after he explains that American society makes very little differentiation between light-skinned African-Americans (or Caribbean-Americans) and darker-skinned ones. Another character thinks something very uncharitable about a person who is half African, half Irish. Overall, though, the conflict isn’t really over race — it’s over the immortal blood.

That doesn’t mean that the racial element of the Africans and African-Americans having what the white people want should be ignored. I’m sure that Ms. Due intended to provoke thought surrounding this issue and how it’s topsy-turvy of, oh, say, the AIDS epidemic in Africa (the rich white countries being so benevolent as to provide life-saving medication to the poor savages in Africa, and I’m being extraordinarily sarcastic here). Overall, it was both an entertaining book and a book that made me consider certain elements in the world differently, and I’m looking forward to finding more books by Ms. Due. 4.5/5 stars.

This collection of twelve stories spans a little over two hundred pages, and includes retellings of folk tales from a handful of east Asian countries, primarily China, Japan, and Korea. The titles are:

“Daughter of Bótù”
“The Tiger Fortune Princess”
“A Thread of Silk”
“The Snow Woman’s Daughter”
“The Tanuki-Kettle”
“Honor is a Game Mortals Play”
“The Raven’s Brocade”
“Shim Chung the Lotus Queen”
“The Tears of My Mother, the Shell of My Father”
“Year of the Fox”
“The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon”
“Returning My Sister’s Face”

They were all originally published in various places, including Heroes in Training, an anthology published by DAW Books in 2007; So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction, an anthology published by Haworth Press in 2007; many different magazines, and various websites. This, I believe, is her first full-length collection.

The title story, and the last one in the book, is probably the meatiest; it’s based on a common Japanese ghost story that apparently has been made into numerous plays and movies. Of course, I’d never heard of it before, not being very familiar with Japanese literature, folk tales, plays, or cinema, but it’s still rather frightening. In the story, a woman (Oiwa) is accused of adultery and killed, and her brother must restore her lost honor. Ms. Foster tells the story from the brother’s point of view, and it featured murder, suicide, lies, an awful scene of discovery, and samurai. It’s a really arresting story, and probably worth the price of the entire collection.

“A Thread of Silk” is the other anchor story in the collection; it’s based on the historical tale of Taira no Masakado, and is actually frightening as well. It’s got the familar elements of revenge and family honor, as well as a horrific sort of immortality. It’s centered on the cousin and sister of the main two involved in the story, and I thought it was a brilliant piece of work, even without knowing the source material. For the slightly more familiar feel, two stories feature Yuki-Onna, the Snow Woman, who is similar to the western Snow Queen. A couple stories also feature rather Cupid-and-Psyche-like setups, with trust as the main factor, and there are a lot of animals-turned-human who fall in love with humans.

“Shim Chung the Lotus Queen” is the story that’s absolutely of Korean origin (Ms. Foster wrote blurbs to go after each story), and I quite enjoyed the filial-virtue-brings-great-rewards story, which is apparently a trait of much Korean folklore. One thing that marked the differences in the stories was the Buddhist stories versus the Shinto or non-religious stories. More explicitly Buddhist stories emphasized that calmness and lack of desire as the way to eternal reward, and the Shinto or non-religious stories generally emphasized family honor and sometimes even revenge. Obviously sometimes the traits were combined, such as in “The Tears of my Mother, the Shell of My Father,” where a boy who is in training to be a priest must meditate to save the honor of his family; or “Year of the Fox,” where one character is concerned with renouncing her cravings and the other is trying to save the family honor.

Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. I’m not familiar with very many East Asian folk or fairy tales, and this was a great introduction, I thought. Ms. Foster’s comments explaining her inspiration were also quite helpful, and it’s definitely convinced me that not only should more authors write in these settings, but that I should search out some of the original tales myself. I’d recommend it to nearly everyone; again, while one can get a taste for Ms. Foster’s work by those available online, I found that the collection was very well arranged and had the commentary. The cover’s pretty neat, too. 5/5 stars.