Book Log #64: Winter Fire, by Elizabeth Lowell

So to continue my burst of Elizabeth Lowell romance reading, I jumped from the Only quartet over to the duology she did about the Maxwell brothers, Autumn Lover and Winter Fire. As it happened I read the latter first, but it didn’t make much difference; after all, this flavor of romance does follow a predictable formula, and it wasn’t like I didn’t know that the gunslinger and girl du jour in the first book would get their happily ever after, and most likely show up in Book 2.

But all that aside, I rather liked Book 2 better than Book 1. The premise is interesting to start with: the Maxwell brothers, Hunter and Case, are tracking the Culpepper clan all over the West following the Culpepper attack on their family, an attack that resulted in the deaths of Hunter’s wife and child. This book focuses on Case, and how after the Culpeppers nearly kill him, he’s taken in by the young widow Sarah Kennedy–on whose ranch the Culpeppers of course have Nefarious Designs, Oh Noez!

Okay, yeah, I’m a sucker for Wounded Hero plots, but it also helped that as the heroes of these things go, Case was pretty alright. There is of course the obligatory angst between him and Sarah as they fall in love, but this time around there was no Holy Crap! She’s a Virgin! going on, nor any real Big Understandings. This left the field open for Sarah to be overprotective of her little brother Connor instead, and he was a nice side character; meanwhile, Case’s big angst point was that he’d adored his brother’s kid and so Oh Noez! Everything he loves dies, blah blah, shoot another couple of Culpeppers already, you’ll feel better.

All in all though not too bad a read. Three stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Book Log #65: Line of Sight, by Rachel Caine

I’m a long-standing Rachel Caine fan, and after recently getting my iPhone I wanted to check out another of her books I hadn’t read–a romantic suspense novel she’d written as part of the Athena Force series. When I picked up Line of Sight I didn’t realize that it was part of a greater continuity, and that in fact it starts off a third line of continuity in the overall series. But that said, the novel stands pretty well by itself and in fact is the launch book for that third continuity line.

And yeah, this was fun. The Athena Academy trains young women in various secret-agenty type skills, and certain of the girls have paranormal abilities as well. But someone has kidnapped two of the Academy’s students, and FBI agent Katie Rush–herself a graduate of the Academy–takes on the task of finding them. She’s thrown an unexpected complication in the guise of Stefan Blackman, a man who’s been living an easy life as a “network psychic”. Problem is, Stefan is genuinely psychic, and he’s getting visions from one of the kidnapped girls.

Caine’s traditional fast pacing is very much in evidence here, as is her ability to whip up some fun chemistry between her lead characters. Plus, she fits very, very well into a line of novels that seems geared for more suspense than romance per se, and it was a very strong introduction for me to the Athena Force. I’ll be looking for more of these novels. Four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Still climbing at Fictionwise! Up to #5!

As of last night I’d jumped up to #6 on Fictionwise’s Fantasy list–but as of tonight? #5, baby! Now I’m in the box at the top of the page!

I am desperately, desperately curious about how many copies this means I’ve actually sold. I mean, let’s be realistic here–I’m an SF/F author and I’m selling in ebook form to boot, so my expectations here are not high. I’ll be stunned and pleased if overall I sell enough copies of this book to get that loverly, loverly Cargo guitar I’m swooning for (which, by the rough math, would require me to sell about 500 copies). For all I know, this ranking on Fictionwise’s list may mean I’ve sold 20 copies in the last twenty days and everybody below me is spread out all the way down to zip. *^_^*;;

I won’t know for sure probably until I get the pertinent royalty statement. Which may not be the first one; I don’t know what span of time that will cover. It may be royalty statement #2!

Till then, though, I’ll indulge myself with the egoboo. And again, anybody out there reading this who’s actually bought the book off of Fictionwise, thank you very much!

Climbing Fast

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.