Nicole Reads A Lot

so many books, so little time

Shady Lady by Ann Aguire

Title:Shady Lady
Author:Ann Aguirre
Publication Date:February 2011
Publisher's Description"I’d spent my whole life settling, trying not to attract attention, and generally doing whatever it took to keep other people happy. I didn’t want to do that again. Not when I was finally comfortable in my own skin. Sure, there were certain challenges, like a drug lord who wanted me dead, and the fact that I owed a demon a debt that he could call due at any moment. But everybody’s got problems, right?"

Whenever Corine Solomon touches an object, she immediately knows its history. But her own future concerns her more and more. Now back in Mexico, she’s running her pawnshop and trying to get a handle on her strange new powers, for she might need them. And soon.

Then former ally Kel Ferguson walks through her door. Heavily muscled and tattooed, Kel looks like a convict but calls himself a holy warrior. This time, he carries a warning for Corine: the Montoya cartel is coming for her—but they don’t just pack automatic weapons. The Montoyas use warlocks, shamans, voodoo priests—anything to terminate trouble. And Corine has become enemy number one…
My rating:****.5

I went back and read Blue Diablo and Hell Fire before I read this book, and I’m glad I did. I hadn’t visited this world for over a year, and there were lots of little details that I had forgotten. Reading the books in a series back to back will either cause you to fall more in love with it, or expose flaws that followed from book to book and make you like the series a lot less (hello, Weather Warden books). Thankfully, this book falls into the former category.

Corine Solomon is a fascinating character…and so is Kel. Ms. Aguire did an excellent job of showing how Corine and Kel’s relationship changes over the course of their time together. Halfway through this book, I nearly forgot how creepy he must have seemed to every rational person in this universe (no offense to poor Shannon, but it’s not like teenagers are known for their rationality).

The number of powerful, complex men in Corine’s life just keeps increasing. The mutation of the Chance and Jesse situation has been fascinating to read, and then the ending of this book went and threw two new curveballs at us. I love it!

I am really looking forward to reading the next book in this series and the further adventures of Corine and co.

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Rebirth by Sophie Littlefield

Title:Rebirth
Author:Sophie Littlefield
Publication Date:July 2011
Publisher's DescriptionCivilization has fallen, leaving California an unforgiving, decimated place. But Cass Dollar beat terrible odds to get her missing daughter back—she and Ruthie will be happy.

Yet with the first winter, Cass is reminded that happiness is fleeting in Aftertime. Ruthie retreats into silence. Flesh-eating Beaters still dominate the landscape. And Smoke, Cass's lover and strength, departs on a quest for vengeance, one that may end him even if he returns.

The survivalist community Cass has planted roots in is breaking apart, too. Its leader, Dor, implores Cass to help him recover his own lost daughter, taken by the totalitarian Rebuilders. And soon Cass finds herself thrust into the dark heart of an organization promising humanity's rebirth—at all costs.

Bound to two men blazing divergent paths across a savage land, Cass must overcome the darkness in her wounded heart, or lose those she loves forever.
My rating:****

I liked this book, but it felt like

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Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield

Title:Aftertime
Author:Sophie Littlefield
Publication Date:February 2011
Publisher's DescriptionTHE WORLD'S GONE.
WORSE, SO IS HER DAUGHTER.

Awakening in a bleak landscape as scarred as her body, Cass Dollar vaguely recalls surviving something terrible. Wearing unfamiliar clothes and having no idea how many days—or weeks—have passed, she slowly realizes the horrifying truth: Ruthie has vanished.

And with her, nearly all of civilization. Where once-lush hills carried cars and commerce, the roads today see only cannibalistic Beaters—people turned hungry for human flesh by a government experiment gone wrong.

In a broken, barren California, Cass will undergo a harrowing quest to get her Ruthie back. Few people trust an outsider, let alone a woman who became a zombie and somehow turned back, but she finds help from an enigmatic outlaw, Smoke. Smoke is her savior, and her safety. For the Beaters are out there. And the humans grip at survival with their trigger fingers. Especially when they learn that she and Ruthie have become the most feared, and desired, of weapons in a brave new world....
My rating:****.5

Yet another zombie book, but not a typical one. This book, maybe more than the other zombie books I’ve read lately (Allison Hewitt is Trapped, and Mira Grant’s Deadline books), focused on what happened to/in the world after the zombies came (which is one of the rebirths to which the title refers). In this world, the zombification of people came as a direct result of biological warfare, waged against the United States by an unspecified enemy that lost a ground war to the US. Zombies are the the WHY of what took place this novel, not the what itself. This novel was about what happened when California begins to remake itself after a zombie outbreak.

The main character, Cass, was a recovering drug addict who was attacked by zombies, briefly became a zombie herself, and then spontaneously recovered. This made sense in the context of the novel, and also served to give us something that is missing from a lot of other zombie books: hope for those who remain. Even though the book made it clear that “outliers” were not even close to common (one figure offered was at 1 in 1,000, but there’s no way to know if this estimate was supposed to be correct), this glimmer of light in an otherwise dark world worked to give the characters in this story something to believe in. If some people were able to be cured, why not everybody?

Cass wasn’t interested in her outlier status, except for what it could bring her: hope of being reunited with Ruthie, her young daughter, who she lost when she was briefly a zombie (or beater, in the parlance of this world). Cass met up with Smoke, a man who, for his own reasons, was willing to assist her, and headed toward the religious colony where her daughter had been sent.

The Convent was full of some seriously mess-up people, but it’s tough to believe that our world wouldn’t split into similar or crazier factions in the face of such circumstances. The small world feeling of this novel made sense in the context of a society where large numbers of people had recently died, and the sense of urgency of the novel made it hard to put down.

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One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire

Title:One Salt Sea
Author:Seanan McGuire
Publication Date:September 2011
Publisher's DescriptionOctober "Toby" Daye is settling into her new role as Countess of Goldengreen. She's actually dating again, and she's taken on Quentin as her squire. So, of course, it's time for things to take a turn for the worse.

Someone has kidnapped the sons of the regent of the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist. To prevent a war between land and sea, Toby must find the missing boys and prove the Queen of the Mists was not behind their abduction. Toby's search will take her from the streets of San Francisco to the lands beneath the waves, and her deadline is firm: she must find the boys in three days' time, or all of the Mists will pay the price. But someone is determined to stop her-and whoever it is isn't playing by Oberon's Laws...
My rating:****.5

I liked the first book in this series well enough to read the second, but An Artificial Night just didn’t interest me as a story, and I nearly gave up on the series altogether. Thankfully, I liked Toby and her mad, mad world enough to give it another try. I’m truly glad that I stuck it out for the next three titles in this series. Each of them has been better than the last, and One Salt Sea is so full of win and awesomeness that I fear the bar may now be set too high for book 6.

Toby is a really compelling character; she’s not human, and doesn’t experience the type of angst over her non-human status that is at this point almost a staple (cliche?) of non/quasi-human protagonists in urban fantasy. Toby’s hangups are largely related to class; as a changeling, she has always had a lower status in the world she chose. With her unasked for ascension to the nobility, she is now the technical equal of many of those who would shun her, which is uncomfortable for everybody involved. Toby’s life up to this point has been about learning to exist on the fringes of both fae and human society, and becoming the Countess of Goldengreen does not mesh well with the survival skills and coping mechanisms that Toby had to acquire to make it to her midfifties. She has rules that are all her own, and make her who she is. These rules are different the rules embodied by some of her closest friends and associates, and leads to a fair amount of tension over some of her actions. It is a testament to how many disparate plots are presented and resolved in this novel that this conflict is not even the first or second most pressing thing going on in Toby’s world.

I can’t begin to offer a reasonable synopsis of this novel that is not spoilerific, but I will say that I definitely didn’t expect to find myself sniffling away at my desk as I finished this book during my lunch break. Seanan McGuire did not pull any punches with this novel.

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If you were a librarian, you’d get emails like this, too

I get the oddest work-related emails:

I admit. I am a crazy cat lady, but my obsession is currently contained to three kitties in home…but that doesn’t mean I’m not obsessed with Maru. YOU KNOW MARU. You have to know Maru. He’s a YouTube sensation! This Japanese Scottish Fold (that sounds oxymoronic) is famous for fitting himself into teensy boxes, jamming his head into paper bags, jumping in and out of pails, and basically being the cutest critter, ever. William Morrow will be introducing the American version of owner mugumogu’s international bestseller, the eponymous I AM MARU, on 8/23/11 ($15.99; ISBN 13: 9780062088413). The US version also features a special edition inside jacket poster and adorable four-color photos on each page. It’s a great book for any cat lover (and legions of rabid Maru fans who have been buying the Japanese version on Amazon for $49.00!).

We would love to invite our cat loving friends to have an advanced preview of I AM MARU – click the image below to log into NetGalley, and get ready for a cute overlord moment!

Have a purrfect weekend!

Love & paws for thought,

[Redacted]

In case you had any doubt, it should now be clear that there is not limit to how much PR people will debase themselves for their job.

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