I’ve always liked private detective style stories, which is why I’m a huge fan of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. What I enjoyed most about their books is the witty repartee between the characters, the zinging dialogues and the “faster than a speeding bullet” comebacks. It was why I was excited to read this book. I read the blurb and thought, “Wow, a werewolf private detective and his sassy Asian-American Girl Friday? Awesome!” I actually printed this book out (toner and paper are not cheap, yo!) and read the whole thing during my Stylistics and Grammar class (it’s ninety minutes). Amidst the talks of transitive verbs and non-restrictive clauses and modal auxiliaries going on in the background, I was able to drown it all out and focus on this book. Much to my disappointment, however, I didn’t find much in the way of witty repartees and zinging dialogues. The heroine was more sharp-tongued than quick-witted. Oh and the fact that she’s Asian is more incidental than anything, since she’s totally white-bread. She reminded me of Cordelia Chase, mostly because she’s a receptionist for a private investigator, but marginally less witty (Cordelia was the queen of one-liners and snappy comebacks, outside of Rosalind Russell, I mean). On top of that, there was very little chemistry between her and the hero (she was too busy being bitchy to him in an effort to hide her true feelings) and oddly enough, though they have several scenes together, nothing much happens between them in the way of development till the end. In short, the story in the background intruded too much on the two of them getting together. I would have been okay with this, if I weren’t a little bit bored by the background story. I mean, there were all these monsters chasing them, but the sense of urgency was just not there. All and all, it’s a quick read, but I’ve read better by this author.
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1) Demon Angel by MelJean Brook

2) Ninja by Racy Li

3) Divine by Choice by PC Cast

4) Lover Revealed by JR Ward

5) Blood Lines by Eileen Wilks

Seriously, I’m willing to kill for these ARCs, except for MelJean’s ’cause she’s sending that one to me already. Heh heh. Which books are you guys willing to give your left tit for?

P.S. Can you totally see this chick’s pearly shell?

Here’s a cover that totally made me jump out of my fucking chair, rubbing at my skin to keep it from trying to crawl away from my body. FUCKING SNAKES, MAN, they give me the creeps! Why were-snakes, dude? This makes about as much sense as a shape-shifting whale (which, by the way, is not as preposterous an idea as you may think). Snakes aren’t romantic, sexy, sensual… and they eat fuzzy baby mice, damn it! After watching Snakes on a Plane, I had Tim checking under the bed with a flashlight for those goddamn snakes, man. Back to the cover. Oddly enough, this isn’t a bad cover despite the FUCKING SNAKES on it. These bitches always seem to have very nice covers. The snakes look about as real as the CGI snakes in those awful snake movies on the Sci-Fi Channel and believe you me, that’s about as real as they should get, in my opinion. Anyway, the hero of this book is a… were-anaconda. Man, I don’t know whether to applaud the Sisters Price or snicker behind my hand at them. I mean, it’s an awesome, yet horrible idea at the same time. There are the inevitable jokes about homeboy keeping a manaconda in his trousers, but those are cheap shots and I’m not going to make them, thank you. Goddamn snakes!

Whoa, check this shit out. It’s got the same cover as the original cover of Evangeline Anderson’s Ceremony of Three, for real! Someone told me once that there’s a giant clip art depository where cover artists get their stock photos from, so it isn’t unusual that two books would have similar looking covers, but it’s a little weird to be actually looking at them side by side. You guys can look at Anderson’s cover and tell me which one you prefer. Either way—and I can’t believe I didn’t see it before—the girl looks eerily like Nicollette Sheridan, dude. Creepy. I don’t watch Desperate Housewives, but I totally hate that bitch. She just looks mean and the kind of lady who’d stab out your eyes for a pair of really nice shoes. Man, I’m totally reaching for something to say about this cover outside of what I’ve already said about Evie Anderson’s Ceremony of Three. It’s funny, really, but I find myself missing the fake Tic-tac fangs and the infected vampire bites on Nicollette’s neck. Those things just added… zing to an otherwise mundane “sexy” cover. All the cover artist really did here is just mess with the color a little bit. Even the font of the title looks pretty standard. What is that, Times New Roman? I dig the author’s name, though: Emery LaRue. She sounds like a madame of a bordello… or a burlesque dancer.

Yeah, I’m totally reaching. Sorry, kids.

Grade: B+
I gotta admit that out of Emma Holly’s yama books, this is the first one I’ve been able to finish. For some reason, I could never get into that world. I have no trouble reading her contemporary work, but her Victorian steampunk stuff always kind of bored me. I couldn’t get past the first few chapters of The Demon’s Daughter and the Midnight books just never did it for me. I wasn’t expecting much when I picked up this book, so imagine my surprise when I found myself devouring it from the very first page. I really enjoyed that the two romantic leads had loved each other as babies and how it develops into an adult love that is breathtakingly sensual. I was impressed by how intelligent and resourceful the heroine is, but at the same time, I was touched by the hero’s vulnerabilities and his struggle to deal with them. The world-building is also phenomenal. It had this old world Far Eastern feel to it complete with emperors, concubines, martial arts, court intrigue, cherry blossoms, and Asian eroticism. The rich, sensual descriptions of everything from the physical aspect of the characters to the colors surrounding them as well as the smells in the air, just added to the trippy, erotic atmosphere. I seriously dug it. Until the last fifty pages, that is. At that point, everything just completely fell apart. The deus ex machina ending, the conventional way the hero saves the heroine, previously unknown folks being brought into the fold so late in the game… it just really killed it all for me. It just didn’t jibe with the tone that Emma Holly had established so early in the book. Disappointed? You bet I was.

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