This post's purpose is to collect my common tags in one place, so readers (and I!) can easily access entries on several subjects.

Surrender of a Siren, Tessa Dare: this is second in a trilogy, but not dependent on the first. I enjoyed it quite a lot; like Dare's first novel, Goddess of the Hunt, old tropes are given new life via delicate twists of characterization.

The heroine, Sophia, is an heiress whose family's sole desire is that she marry well; not only does she think they don't understand her, they really don't understand her (this is not hammered home). She's an artist and wants more, and has spent her life making up stories and/or lying about things to make them more interesting. When the book begins, she's run away from an engagement and is trying to find passage to Tortula. She lies in her note to her family, saying she ran off with the mythical French artist Gervais, and she lies to the ship owner, telling him she's traveling to take up a post as a governess, when actually she plans to travel further once she's overseas. Waht I liked about this crazy plan is that it felt true to the character. She wasn't "too stupid to live," just impulsive and desperate.

The hero, Gray, is an excellent match because he's also done stupid and impulsive things in his time, mostly as a result of guilt issues related to his family. His recently-widowed brother, Joss, is the son of his father and a slave, and their relationship is wonderfully rich and complex - I would love to see a book about Joss. We don't meet his sister until the end, but she's the heroine of the third book in the trilogy. Gray is trying to reform from having an impulsive, dangerous lifestyle as a privateer. He wants to set up Joss for life with a shipping company and give his sister a season in London so she can marry. Then he meets Sophia, and is unbearably tempted by her.

The best thing about this book is the characters, though I also enjoyed the ocean voyage details. The ending might seem too dramatic, but I thought it perfectly suited these characters and the book's themes.

So far, everyone I've asked has liked the first book more than the second, and I will admit the first one has one of my bulletproof kinks, the Stoic Hero. But this one is just as well-written and entertaining, and deserves equal attention.

Poll #1484453 Hot Romance!!!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

Oracne needs to write a "hot romance" story. Which of these settings appeals?

This is my first choice of sub-genre.

You should do another poll for characters!

My random comment is

I finished Jeri Smith-Ready's Wicked Game yesterday. It was one of the best urban fantasy novels I'd read in a long while. For those who read Carrie Vaughn's Kitty series, there were similarities to that - setting at a radio station, smartmouthed heroine - but also a lot of good things that were all its own.

The heroine, Ciara, is the daughter of jailed con artists, and is using small cons to work her way through college so she can go straight. She gets a summer internship at a small radio station where the DJs are all vampires.

The cool part is that vampires in this world become stuck in their "life times" and find it really difficult to cope with change and the passage of time. So being DJs helps them cope, in that they are immersed in the music of their life, but also have to read the news reports, which helps tie them to the present day. Smith-Ready also links in vampiric obsessive-compulsive behaviors in a way I really liked, so that it was a way the vampires could control small things while the world went quickly past them.

The other thing I really liked is that the heroine enters a relationship with the vampire - if you read this subgenre, that isn't a spoiler - but it's not glowingly, instantly perfect. She doesn't like the idea of being bitten, she has to come to terms with the disadvantages of his condition, and she worries about herself as much as she worries about him. The reality of the relationship really involved me in the story.

There's plot, too. *heh* There's a Secret Government Agency, there's a Vampire Commune/Enclave, there's an evil corporate radio monopoly. That's all good, too.

So, I'm going to read the sequel. And add this one to my recs when people ask about paranormal romance/urban fantasy.


Wicked Game

I've read a lot of good books lately.

Carol Berg's Flesh and Spirit was first, a large but very involving fantasy about an outcast who stumbles into plots upon plots. I devoured it in two days, mostly because I loved the protagonist, who doubts himself and denies his kind impulses but proves himself all the same; also, he makes real mistakes, which made the story almost compulsive for me. The book ends on a semi-cliffhanger, and I have the second one ready to go as soon as I have a couple of days where I can read non-stop!

Flesh and Spirit


The rest are historical romances, all set in England.

Jo Beverley, The Secret Wedding: I'm a Beverley fangirl, so I enjoyed this, even though I felt that the characters hiding their identities from each other was a bit contrived (though they did have good reason to do so). The secret wedding happens when the two are teenagers and one rescues the other from a nasty seducer; they're then forced to marry. The cool part is that she works in details about new Georgian marriage laws and when they came into effect. The hero and heroine go their separate ways and each eventually is told the other is dead. Until they realize that wasn't true and try to discover the truth, which leads to pseudonymous adventures, affairs, etc.. The ending is engineered somewhat by Rothgar, the series Deus ex machina, but I didn't really mind.

The Secret Wedding

Meredith Duran, Bound By Your Touch: second book by this author. It's a Victorian setting, featuring a frivolous uncaring hero at war with his father and a classically educated heroine who serves as her archaeologist father's agent in England. They're drawn into working together by a possible forgery plot in which they are both involved, and the heroine, initially disdainful, begins to realize the hero is much more than he seems; smarter, for one thing, and also truly attracted to her. And it's pretty hot. The overall tone reminded me of Judith Ivory, so yes, I really liked this. She has a third book out which I'm saving for a bit.

Bound by Your Touch


Tessa Dare, Goddess of the Hunt: this is a new author, whose second book comes out today. It's a Regency, and uses a lot of tropes common to Regency historicals, but makes them seem new by giving new twists or simply by having her characters react in unexpected ways. Her hero is the heroine's brother's grim and angsty friend; the heroine is a tomboyish, independent young woman who thinks she's in love with someone else. Despite the familiarity of the setting, and elements of the plot, it felt fresh. Which is pretty impressive, I think. I've pre-ordered her next two books already.

Goddess of the Hunt

Carla Kelly, Marrying the Captain: Carla Kelly is one of my favorite romance writers--in the top two of my all-time list for the genre--so atfer saving this one for a while, I savored it, or tried to; I ended up finishing it in a single day.

It's the story of a practical young woman, the illegitimate daughter of a viscount, who's trying to survive in hard times and a lonely ship captain, loyal and dedicated, who always thought marriage was a bad idea for Naval officers at war. It's set in Portsmouth during the time when England's navy was involved in an endless, wearing sea blockade because of the Napoleonic Wars in the Peninsula. Kelly includes vivid detail of the hardship that resulted for both the navy and for the people of the shore town.

Like all Kelly novels, it focuses on regular people. They're not nobility, they don't have magical powers. Miraculous social elevation doesn't happen. Her heroes aren't rakes. Her characters just want good lives and love, and gently, tentatively, with a humor, they find what they need.

Her novels make me happy. I'm going to save the next one, The Surgeon's Lady, for a little while longer.

540 words at lunch yesterday, or thereabouts, and I intended to write after work, but was just so sleep-deprived that I finally decided to go to bed early instead. I feel much better today.

No lunchtime writing today because I am meeting drinkingcocoa and The Maw for lunch. Was planning to take the night off, but if I get twitchy maybe I'll write. Saturday is totally a writing day.

This morning there was a song on the radio which repeated over and over again the line, "make a dollar out of Jesus." And I kept wondering if that was related to making a mushroom out of George Washington by folding the dollar bill. Until the song ended and the title was announced as "You'd Make a Doubter Out of Jesus." Oh.

I am reading Blue Ice by Anne Stuart which is yet another one of hers in which the hero and heroine meet because he's supposed to kill her to prevent a massacre, and he in fact is about to kill her a couple of times, once even making her unconscious and submerging her under the water, but then can't go through with it, which turns out okay because she holds an Important Secret which is also needed to prevent the massacre. There is clearly some romantic fantasy there, but I can't quite identify what it might be. "She was the Love of His Life--she was the only one he couldn't quite bring himself to kill?"

500 words at lunch yesterday.  I'm writing at lunch again today.

No writing last night because I went out to dinner at Susanna Foo with feklar and barbarienne. I had crispy duck.  I don't often eat duck, because it has to be cooked just right for me to like it.  This was just right.  Crispy!  I don't plan to tell the Adorable Tots I ate duck, though.  Just in case.

Sent the first bit of the pirate novel off to my workshop, assuming our schedule works out for it.

I'm devouring Elizabeth Hoyt's To Beguile a Beast.  It's third in a series of Georgian period historical romances.  You don't need to read the prior ones to enjoy this one, though they've all been excellent.  I am loving this one because the hero is a grumpy naturalist.  The heroine is on the run and needs his castle as a hiding place for her and her two children, so she basically forces him to accept her as his housekeeper.  Animal warning:  There is a sad bit with a dog but it's over quickly, then there is a puppy.

I'm reading Jean Ross Ewing's Illusion, a historical romance novel from the mid-1990s, and am most amused by its homages to Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond books, particularly the ones featuring Francis Crawford's relationship with Philippa Somerville. The angstful, brilliant hero has Secret Pain beneath Public Decadence and Depravity, and frequently quotes literature (usually the Bible) when he speaks [sound familiar?]. The smitten yet very practical heroine is an English woman who grew up in India and ended up being trained in many arts by the women of a maharaja's household after her father's death, though never actually being with a man; she is named Frances. It's full of intense emotion; also, chimneys are very important, which made me think of Dorothy Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon.

I put off reading this for a long time because "harem" stories annoy me, but little did I know I would actually be reading Lymond AU fanfic!  I laugh and laugh.  If you've read the Lymond books, you would likely laugh and laugh, too.  I am quite entertained. 

I finished Anna Katherine's Salt and Silver last night, and really enjoyed the breezy, funny first-person voice. It's a new urban fantasy/paranormal romance from Tor, and actually reads more like fantasy from the fantasy-genre than romance, which is part of why I liked it so much.

There were some slow spots in the middle, when the characters are traveling through series of underworlds, and I think the entire book should have been a little longer, but overall the voice made it for me, and I had a great time reading it.

Also, you can't go wrong referencing the Hand of Franklin.

Michele Ann Young, The Lady Flees Her Lord: this is the second by this author I've read, and I enjoyed both except for the endings, which felt a bit chaotic and rushed; this second one had an even more chaotic ending than the first, with sudden reversals, lots more characters invading, and people getting shot to eliminate the problems that had beset the characters for the rest of the book.

Other than that, though, I really enjoyed it. It's a Regency-set historical featuring a large, curvy woman, which is rare enough. Her family is well-off, and when the novel opens she's married to an aristocrat. She thought he was in love with her, but by this point it's clear he despises her and only married her for her money; he constantly insults her weight, her apparent barrenness, her capabilities, etc.. When it looks as though she's about to be subjected to further awfulness at a house party of his friends, she flees.

In the fleeing, she ends up with a street child, and keeping the girl helps to hide her from her husband. She sets up in a village as a widowed woman and her daughter, and is there fairly happy. The romance, after a rocky start, evolves between her and the local lord, who's just returned from the Napoleonic Wars, wounded and angstful (yes, that was one of the reasons I bought this). He comes to admire her organizational abilities and bravery, and also thinks she's hot.

I liked that there was a real barrier keeping them apart--she's still married, and afraid what will happen if she's found; she also mourns having to hide from her beloved family as well as from her husband, which I think she does to protect them, not because she thinks they will not protect her. The hero's angst revolves around the deaths of his mother and, later, his Spanish wife. This hampers them, but doesn't stop them becoming involved. I think I would have liked this a lot more if their problems had lasted longer, and been more difficult to resolve. The parts I did like, I liked a lot.

Susan Grant, Once a Pirate: I'm reading some pirate romances while I write The Duke and the Pirate Queen; I'm taking note of plot elements to try and see how necessary they are, and how they're used. This one also involved time travel, and possibly reincarnation--I got a bit confused by what was physical and what was psychic.

The cool thing about this one is that the heroine is a U.S. Navy pilot, who has to eject from her jet into the ocean, and a few times her training is very useful. She gets to do an especially cool thing near the end.

Plot elements: heroine is stranger in a strange land; hero is ship captain. Pirates have been wronged by society, are seeking revenge, and have a code of honor. Pirates have a base on a tropical island. Heroine befriends various of the crew, who are loyal to her. The equator is crossed, with appropriate rituals. There is a perky cabin boy. There is a sea battle, with cannon. Bonus heroine crossdressing; she wears her flight suit, which is strange to her hosts.

Avi's YA novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle isn't really a pirate novel, but a sea adventure. Charlotte ends up alone on a ship with an evil captain, whom she initially trusts because he is of her own social status, despite warnings from the ship's cook, an old black man. One of the best things about the book is that her opinions are very much of her time, and when her opinions change, it's fairly realistically portrayed. After she realizes the captain is evil, she sides with the crew and learns to be one of them, working the sails, etc.. When she is returned to her parents, she can't handle the restriction and refuses to forget her experiences; she is out of place in her own society, and returns to sea.

Plot elements: heroine is stranger in a strange land and also hero. Most of the sailors have a code of honor. Heroine befriends various of the crew, who are loyal to her. Bonus heroine crossdressing.

I've got a couple more pirate romances on the TBR.

I blogged over at the pro blog about not liking vampires and why, but currently am reading a vampire book, Marta Acosta's Happy Hour at Casa Dracula, which is awesome.

I don't think it really is a vampire romance, though I got my copy at the Romance Writers of America conference. I mean, it has some, but it treats them completely differently from other vampire romances. The book is really about the first-person narrator, Milagro De Los Santos, her voice and her life; the vampires are secondary. Also, her voice is strongly Latina, which is a nice change.

I'm not even done reading it yet and I already think everyone else should read this book and tell me what you think.

Suzanne Brockmann, Into the Fire: ostensibly the main plot is the romance between Hannah Whitfield, a former cop left deaf after an accident, and her lifelong friend and former Marine Vinh Murphy, who was married to Hannah's best friend Angelina until Angelina was killed several (?) books ago.

However, to me this book was more of a group book; there are several intertwining plotlines, mostly with couples in various stages of their relationships, and most of them seemed just as important as Vinh and Hannah's romance. The ongoing saga of Decker, Sophia, and Dave reaches a crisis point when the Troubleshooters commander brings in a therapist to deal with everyone's trauma, and it looks like this plot will become a focus in the next book; over in the land of Navy SEALS, Izzy Zanella falls in love at first sight and ends up marrying a pregnant teenager (age 18) even though he's not the father of her baby; I suspect their plot will continue later in the series, as well.

As is usual with Brockmann, there's also a complex suspense plot involving the murder of Tim Ebersole, leader of a cult of white supremacists who was involved in Angelina's death. The cliffhangers at the end of the scenes are really well done. This was a great book to have while traveling as it was difficult for me to put down.

Brockmann continues to include characters of various races. Lindsey Fontaine Jenkins from Into the Storm is back as a supporting character, Jay "J-Lo" Lopez has some good scenes, and Vinh Murphy is half-black, half-Vietnamese, which has some effect on plot events. I do wish Brockmann would run a search on the word exotic in reference to eyes before she finishes her manuscripts, though!

I think there's enough information provided that one doesn't have to be familiar with the series to understand what's going on. Your mileage may vary. I think it would be a big help to read Flashpoint, which I believe is the book whose events are most relevant to this one.

I think I made good progress on the proposal this weekend; it feels weird to be polishing and adding layers into a couple of chapters without continuing, but I didn't want to submit rought draft, either.

Blogged about opening sentences of novels. For this week, I wrote my blog posts ahead of time, since I'll be out of town for a few days.

Reading the new Nalini Singh book, Angel's Blood, first in a new series. In the first chapter, I felt it was a bit heavy on the worldbuilding for what the story needed, which happens a lot in paranormals that are meant to become series. I am overly picky about this issue, so I imagine not everyone will notice or care. After the first chapter it didn't feel so guidebook-y to me. I am enjoying the book now that I've gotten into it, and really like that Singh's characters have a wide variety of racial backgrounds.

The setup is that there are psychically powerful winged beings, called archangels, who semi-formally control the world. There are regular angels as well, who don't seem to have the psychic powers, or not as much. The archangels can create vampires in exchange for the vampires serving them for a century, and if the vampires run off, a hunter like the protagonist, Elena, fetches them back. The angels and vampires are not of divine origin in this setup, and I learned in chapter eleven that they've always been around in human history. The archangels are very beautiful and scary, so of course Elena has to do a job for Raphael, archangel of New York City. She finds him dangerously attractive. He finds her dangerously attractive. But they must track an archangel gone evil.

Ooh, and I saw the Watchmen movie! Did not care about the ending alteration, thought it was tidier than the original, was amused by the "Outer Limits" shout-out. Loved the look of the costumes and sets. Winced a bit at some of the blood-spattering. Overall, was quite satisfied. I had popcorn, too.

I read the new Eileen Wilks novel, Mortal Sins (World of the Lupi, Book 5) over the weekend, and really enjoyed it. I think it's one of the best in the series so far.

For those coming in late, her series has a species of werewolves, all male, called Lupi. The first book introduces detective Lily Yu, who ends up psychically mate-bonded to a Lupi. And for once, I didn't mind a psychic mate bond! The books are set in a roughly contemporary US where magic works, and lately has begun to work much better, with accompanying problems. Lily can detect magical gifts in humans, and goes to work for the FBI in a special unit that deals with magical and related issues. There's also been some travel to other dimensions, but I like the "magic is awake right here!" plots best.

Mortal Sins has a number of conflicts going. First, Lily's Lupus mate Rule is dealing with being temporarily appointed as heir to a Lupus clan other than his own, which has a psychic component, at the same time as he has to go to court with an estranged partner to gain custody of his son. (As all Lupi are male, they breed with regular humans. They breed true, if I remember right, always having male children who are Lupi.) There's the relationship with his son's grandmother, who's raised the child, as well. Then he finds murdered bodies.

Wilks continues to address issues of race, sometimes explicitly. A local cop is black, and is angry when Lily calls him on prejudice against Lupi; in another scene, Lily reminds someone that she is not white. There are several places where racial prejudice is mentioned in conjunction with prejudice against people who have magic. When Lily speaks of going public with her magical ability, however, she likens it to a gay person coming out.

I am really interested in seeing where Wilks goes with this next.

See? Very calm now, that my book is out. Calm. Yes, indeed. Very calm.

For travel reading, I decided on by Sherry Thomas, which I no longer have to hoard now that I know she'll have another book [Not Quite a Husband]; Demon Angel (The Guardians, Book 2) by Meljean Brook, for which I've received many recs; and a ringer thrown in at the last minute, Snowbound, a Harlequin Superromance by Janice Kay Johnson, who can be very soothing and undemanding.

I am especially curious about how I'll like the Brook. I read the initial short story in this series (it was in an anthology with an Emma Holly story), and was basically unmoved, though it was by no means a bad story. I suspect I was overwhelmed at the time with reading a lot of paranormal romances in a row. We shall see. It would be nice to have another series I like and can glom. As a side note, I wonder if people go nuts that the novel is listed as "#2" when there is no novel #1, only that short story?

Judith James, Broken Wing: set in the Napoleonic period, the hero is a former orphaned child raised as a prostitute and the heroine is an unconventional widow who wears trousers and studies astronomy. The book has a very old-school feel; the traveling adventure section in the middle section reminded me of novels like Captain Blood. At the same time, the romance is very tender and emotional. Definitely worth reading, even with what I felt were pacing problems..

It could have been a much longer book. The middle section, in which the hero is off having adventures he doesn't really want to have, and experiencing more angst which he will have to overcome later, has some summarizing, and much of what the heroine's doing during that period is only shown briefly. I found myself getting impatient to have them meet again, so we could get back to the romance, instead of simply enjoying the renegado mercenaries and bloody boy's own adventures and such. By the time I reached the last section, when the hero returns to Europe, I was ready to skip ahead of the final problem hero and heroine must overcome, and had to restrain myself from doing so. I was glad they overcame their problem by actually talking about it.

The book's from Medallion Press, who specialize in romances that are a little bit different, for example a couple set in Australia after World War One, and one set in 11th century India. I'll be interested to see what James does next.

Jade Lee, Tempted Tigress: an adventure story set in China during the Opium Wars, with the White heroine (raised in China, by British nuns) involved in the opium trade and the Chinese hero trying to bring the trade down as both policeman and executioner. Lots of gritty historical detail, which sounds accurate so far as my knowledge goes.

I wouldn't have been surprised if this story had ended badly, but luckily, it's a romance. I think that's the only trick to liking the book; you have to remember that it's a Romance, and the happy ending has to happen, so seemingly insurmountable cultural/political issues must be overcome.

( Spoilers and commentary. )

If you've read this one, or any of these, what did you think?