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July 09
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Gail
gave
 
to:
Reunion in Death (Paperback)
by J.D. Robb
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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May 30
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Gail
is currently reading:
Wicked Gentlemen (Perfect Paperback)
by Ginn Hale
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Gail
gave
to:
Voices of the Night (Signet Eclipse)
by Lydia Joyce
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Gail said:
"The heroine is a dance hall singer who's got herself crossways with one of the powerful men in London's underworld and been fired from her job. The hero is a nobleman with a bratty sister who winds up in a bet that he can have a street urchin accepte...more
The heroine is a dance hall singer who's got herself crossways with one of the powerful men in London's underworld and been fired from her job. The hero is a nobleman with a bratty sister who winds up in a bet that he can have a street urchin accepted in society, and when he goes shopping for his new protege at the opera auditions, discovers an amazing actress with a decent voice—the heroine. He offers to support her, educate her for society, and get her voice lessons so she can sing in the opera—her mother was a singer and it's been her goal for years—if she will agree to his plans. Desperate for money to support her chavvies, the children she's taken in, and for a place to escape from the gangster after her, she agrees. This story is up to Joyce's usual fabulousness. Excellent read....less
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Gail
gave
to:
Shadows of the Night (Paperback)
by Lydia Joyce
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Gail said:
"This book opens at a ton wedding. The heroine is on the verge of panic, wondering why in the world she agreed to marry this man she barely knows. The hero's feeling very self-satisfied and planning an ordinary ton marriage. She starts feeling more an...more
This book opens at a ton wedding. The heroine is on the verge of panic, wondering why in the world she agreed to marry this man she barely knows. The hero's feeling very self-satisfied and planning an ordinary ton marriage. She starts feeling more and more dissatisfied, unhappy over the hero's power over her, and he's more and more irritated by her little acts of rebellion. Then something happens and things change wildly. I think Joyce motivates the change well--your mileage may vary. The newlyweds head off to one of the hero's estates, one that's been causing problems, in order to obtain more privacy to work out this left-turn their marriage seems to have taken, but that doesn't turn out like expected either. It's a bit of a "road-trip" "being stripped down to essentials" sort of story, and there's a mystery tossed in for them to solve that in some ways seems a bit extraneous, but Joyce weaves it into the main romance pretty well. What I like best about Joyce, and about this book, is that she can infuse so much emotional tension into the story, and at the same time, allow her characters to have intelligent discussions about difficult subjects. ...less
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Gail
gave
to:
Grimspace (Paperback)
by Ann Aguirre
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Gail said:
"This one is more science fiction than it is romance. There’s a solid romance here, but it plays second fiddle to the science fiction. So. The heroine has a distinctive gene that allows her to connect with “grimspace”—the space between wormhol...more
This one is more science fiction than it is romance. There’s a solid romance here, but it plays second fiddle to the science fiction. So. The heroine has a distinctive gene that allows her to connect with “grimspace”—the space between wormholes, to use somebody else’s terminology—and guide ships through it until they come out into normal space again. But something happened in her last jump, the ship crashed, and she’s the only one who survived. She’s in a hospital, but it feels more like a prison, and she’s not getting any better, and she really hates it. And then this guy shows up and offers to break her out. But she needs to decide in, like 30 seconds. And that’s how the story begins. It goes from That. There’s an evil monolithic greedy corporation that controls everything. There’s a group of wildcatters who want to get around the corporation (called The Corp) who have a plan for the heroine. There’s lots of explosions and weird, creepy aliens, some of which aren’t so creepy when you get to know them, and some of which are totally very icky and nasty. Things get really, really, really bad, and then Aguirre solves them in about 5 pages, which made feel a trifle deus-ex-machina-ish at the end. The first person POV meant you didn’t get much depth to the hero, but you got a lot from the heroine, and that was all good. I liked the book a lot, and would recommend it to anybody who likes Linnea Sinclair....less
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Gail
gave
to:
Blood Noir (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Book 16)
by Laurell K. Hamilton
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Gail said:
"This is book 16 in the Anita Blake saga. I bought it and read it Tuesday, release day, then I took a couple of days to think about it. I will probably read it again maybe next week, to be sure I have it all straight. Sometimes I think Hamilton starts...more
This is book 16 in the Anita Blake saga. I bought it and read it Tuesday, release day, then I took a couple of days to think about it. I will probably read it again maybe next week, to be sure I have it all straight. Sometimes I think Hamilton starts with one intention, but during the writing of the story, the characters do things she maybe didn't expect and the intention gets lost and/or swallowed up in other stuff. Lately, the solving of the mystery has quite often happened off stage, which is sometimes frustrating. Anyway. This story. Jason the Werewolf, Jean-Claude's pomme de sang, has just broken up with his mermaid girlfriend because she was too smotheringly possessive. On top of that, he's just learned that his estranged father is dying of cancer and if he doesn't go see him now, he might never see him alive again. But he doesn't want to go alone. Dad's always thought Jason was gay (even though he was apparently quite the high school ladies' man), and Mom thinks if he brings home a girl, he'll prove to Dad that he's not. But, since he's just broken up with the girlfriend, the only girl-type friend available is Anita. All her live-ins agree that she should go for the visit, so she does. But things get really hinky from there, because when he gets to town, he's mistaken for a cousin (who he resembles enough to have been mistaken for many times back when) who is the son of a politically prominent father, and the press is swarming. This is like MICAH in that it's a "road trip" book, focusing on Anita and Jason. Richard shows up for his de rigeur angst-and-anger session (and that gets Really Weird). Marmee Noir sticks her nose in. There's lots of sex (duh), but not all of it is described in minute detail, for once. I think this book felt strange to me, because the "main mystery" of the book doesn't turn up until fairly late in the book, and then is solved off stage. It's really, mostly a relationship book. It's about Jason and his family, Anita and Jason, Anita and Richard, and some new metaphysical junk that Mommie Vampirest slings in for grins. Not your usual Anita Blake. I enjoyed reading it, but once or twice I wondered if Hamilton knew where she was going. It didn't seem very cohesive and--well, if it has a structure, I couldn't find it. More like a whole lot of interesting episodes strung together, whose meaning will show up in book 17 or 18, or maybe even book 43... And yet. I liked it. ...less
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Gail
gave
to:
Lord of Scoundrels (Avon Romantic Treasure)
by Loretta Chase
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Gail said:
"I loved, loved, loved this book. It begins much like several other books I've read--with the son of an important aristocrat being born and either having a deformity, or growing up to stutter, or being blamed for his mother's faults and the father aba...more
I loved, loved, loved this book. It begins much like several other books I've read--with the son of an important aristocrat being born and either having a deformity, or growing up to stutter, or being blamed for his mother's faults and the father abandoning the boy, or undertaking to beat his flaws out of him, or some such. So I can perhaps be forgiven for thinking I'd read it before. I hadn't. The hero's Italian mother runs off with some merchant when he's 7 or 8, he gets sent off to boarding school, where, because he's got a huge Italian nose and is funny-looking, he's tormented endlessly. He learns to deal with it by either not caring, fighting back, or both. So, the heroine comes to Paris to rescue her idiot brother from this evil decadent lord who's going to ruin him. She is totally not what the hero (the evil lord) expects. He's not exactly what she expected. Especially the attraction between them. They clash and kiss and spar and flirt and fight and... Each one escalates the combat between them, expecting the other to back down--and then they don't. It's an astounding, fabulous tour-de-force of a book. I don't have words for the awesomeness of this book. I love it, and cannot believe I never read it before now. I have totally been missing out....less
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Gail
gave
to:
Fortune's Fool (Mass Market Paperback)
by Mercedes Lackey
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008, has a copy to sell/swap
Gail said:
"The heroine is the Sea King's daughter, who serves as his spy and assassin because she can breathe as well on land as in the sea. (The Sea King and his children are human shaped with legs, not mer-people with fins.) The hero is the Seventh Son of the...more
The heroine is the Sea King's daughter, who serves as his spy and assassin because she can breathe as well on land as in the sea. (The Sea King and his children are human shaped with legs, not mer-people with fins.) The hero is the Seventh Son of the king of a Russian-style kingdom, a Fortunate Fool. It takes Lackey a while to get the "real" story underway, because she first sends the heroine off on an adventure in a Japanese-ish kingdom. This adventure seems to have nothing to do with the main story, except that the heroine is given an origami bird which plays a small role later on. Then the heroine is sent to investigate why the Russian kingdom is so quiet, with no trouble for so long, and meets the hero and realizes he's the reason. They fall for each other, then she's sent off on a mission by her father, things go awry and the hero goes on a quest to rescue her. This is kind of a disjointed story, but it's still interesting....less
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Gail
gave
to:
The Sharing Knife, Volume Three: Passage (Hardcover)
by Lois McMaster Bujold
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Gail said:
"This is the third book in the Sharing Knife series. I think (hope) there's one more to come. In this book, Fawn and Dag are trekking south away from his home Lakewalker camp again. They have been essentially kicked out of the camp, but not exactly ex...more
This is the third book in the Sharing Knife series. I think (hope) there's one more to come. In this book, Fawn and Dag are trekking south away from his home Lakewalker camp again. They have been essentially kicked out of the camp, but not exactly exiled. They just didn't approve of his marriage, and Dag wouldn't abandon Fawn. The malice attack in LEGACY was so disastrous because farmers didn't know anything about malices--how to recognize one or what to do when the signs of a malice appear--Dag wants to begin educating the farmers about malices and about Lakewalkers. Things that Lakewalkers have kept secret for centuries. Dag has promised to show Fawn the sea, so they stop off back at her parents' farm to say hello (and let Dag finish recovering from the malice attack) on the way, and get caught up in harvest. When they leave, her youngest brother tags along--just as far as the river. But somehow, he never does turn around to go back. Dag and Fawn just keep collecting people, beginning with the brother. This is a "road trip" book, but the road in question is the river. Dag and Fawn discover lots of things and make lots of changes on their trip to the sea. Good, good read. I liked this one better than LEGACY because it was about Fawn and Dag together, about them adjusting to life together and learning new things together. Liked it a whole, whole lot. ...less
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Gail
gave
to:
The Sharing Knife Volume Two: Legacy (Sharing Knife)
by Lois McMaster Bujold
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Gail said:
"This is the second book in The Sharing Knife series. In Legacy, Fawn and Dag are newlyweds, married by both the Lakewalker and the "farmer" tradition. (Dag is a Lakewalker, Fawn is a farmer) And they're off to introduce Fawn to Dag's relati...more
This is the second book in The Sharing Knife series. In Legacy, Fawn and Dag are newlyweds, married by both the Lakewalker and the "farmer" tradition. (Dag is a Lakewalker, Fawn is a farmer) And they're off to introduce Fawn to Dag's relatives in his home camp. His family isn't any more welcoming to this interloper than Fawn's family was. She tries to learn about Lakewalker traditions and culture, but it's a struggle. Especially when most of them look down on her for not having any "ground sense." (All living things have "ground." Lakewalkers can sense it and manipulate it. Farmers can't.) Then word comes of a terrible malice outbreak at a farmer town/Lakewalker camp off to the north. Malices are these terrible things that consume ground and destroy everything they touch. Lakewalkers devote most of their existence patrolling to kill malices. So Dag leads a company up to get rid of this one. And things go...strangely. I liked this book, but not as much as the first one. Largely because Fawn and Dag spent most of the book separated in one fashion or another. A large part of what appeals to me about these books is the way they work together and learn about each other and how to accommodate their differences. And in this one, they were just apart too much to suit me. The ending was different as well. Hopeful, but not happy. Things didn't turn out well--but they didn't turn out badly either....less
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