Grade: A-

Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite fairy tale. I just liked the idea of a beautiful, innocent young woman falling in love with a creature that is a little less than human and is more of an animal than anything. I even liked the Disney version with the dancing teacups and everything. That part when Beauty comes back to the Beast and he’s near death and she begs him not to die because she loved him and couldn’t live without him… man, gets me every time. Which is why it always pissed me off, even as a little girl, when the Beast turned into a handsome young man. I mean, it totally negates the whole “look beyond the surface” lesson of the story. Beauty fell in love with the Beast, not some pretty boy. I gotta admit, though, that I always got a kick out of Beauty staring at the transformed Beast in the end, like she’s thinking, “Who are you? I want the man I fell in love with!” Can you just imagine falling in love with someone just as he is only to have him yanked away from you and replaced with a beautiful man just because The Powers That Be can’t have a beautiful, innocent, young woman settling down with a man who isn’t conventionally handsome… someone different? But that’s a rant for another time. This retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, who wrote the beautiful, elegant Sunshine, is more in the vein of the Disney version with the dancing teacups, but this time around, Beauty is a little more than a simpering fool. The Beast, on the other hand… well, he could have been a little more beastly, but he was adequately charming. And kind of boring. I wish he’d gone a little nuts at least and tore up some furniture. But he doesn’t. Sigh.

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Grade: A

Let’s get the confession out of the way. I so did not want to read this book. In fact, I had no intention of reading it. Zilch. Nada. Nope. Wasn’t gonna do it. Richelle had asked me if I wanted an ARC and since I’ve never been able to say no to anyone, I said “sure,” and flung it on top of my mountainous TBR pile, ready to forget all about it. Why was I being so mean to this poor book I knew nothing about, you ask? I had just finished reading a succubus book and while I enjoyed it, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read another one so soon. Besides, I was a little put off by the title. I thought it was going to be wacky and zany, something in the vein of Katie McAllister’s or Lynsay Sands’ books. And I’m not a big fan of wacky. Nor zany. I like ‘em in tiny little doses. And I wasn’t exactly thrilled about reading about another demoness in-a-big-city who can’t decide if she should wear her Manolo Blahnik or her Jimmy Choos to her succubus-ing. I wasn’t thrilled with the cover chick looking like a strung-out Avril Lavigne, either (though I will confess to hearing “I’m With You” playing in my head over and over while reading this book). A paranormal chick-lit? *shudder* No. Just… no. I even kind of hoped Mead would forget she sent me this book so she wouldn’t expect a review. ‘Cause you can’t review something you didn’t read, Harriet Klausner! But then… magic happened. I was looking for something to read during my history class when I spotted this book on my TBR pile and thought, “Why the hell not. I’ll read a chapter and if it really sucks, I’ll set it on fire.” Even though I was immediately enchanted by Mead’s witty, light-hearted prose and engaging characters, I was still determined not to like this book (I didn’t want to encourage this new bandwagon, you know). And then it made me laugh out loud. My prof looked at me and said, “You find Nat Turner being executed funny?” I stammered something idiotic and prayed the ground would swallow me whole. As soon as I got home, I opened the book again. And my resolve began to weaken. I was laughing and lusting and getting mad at the appropriate spots and really, really liking the heroine, Georgie Kincaid. I totally lost the battle halfway through the book. DAMN IT.

The note that Mead had scrawled on the first page of the book says, “Bam, hope you’ll be gentle. If not, I just hope it’s a funny thrashing.” Dude, I’m always funny, even when I’m gushing praises. And I so did not want to gush praises because Mead won my February contest and now I’m reviewing her book and I so didn’t want this blog to turn into an I HEART RICHELLE MEAD blog. But it might, anyway. Damn it. So not cool. I consoled myself with the fact that I figured out who the villain was right away, so hah (just keep in mind that I’m frighteningly smart at times).

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Grade: B
According to Jane’s review, this is really more of a ex-demon-redemption story with a chick lit twist than a traditional paranormal romance. I gotta say that after reading this book, I can’t help but agree with her. Check this out: a sexually aware woman has an identity crisis, flees to the big city for a new life, finds a job she really enjoys, bonds with the girls at her workplace, comes into her own, develops a romance with a new man even though she has unresolved issues with a previous lover, stumbles into one hijinx-high situation after the other, but realizes at the end of the book that she’s gonna make it after all. Tell me that ain’t the plot of about a hundred chick lit books out there. The biggest difference between this book and every single dime-a-dozen chick lit out there is its very high readability factor. I finished this sucker in three hours and found myself laughing or sympathizing with the heroine page after page. This book isn’t perfect, course: I had some issues with it, namely its shaky narrative and sometime questionable, kind of cheesy dialogue. Other than that, I had a lot of fun reading this book and can’t wait for the next one in the series (which should be coming out in November 2007, according to the author).

Jezebel is a happy-go-lucky demon who loves her job. And why shouldn’t she? As a succubus, her main task is to have sex with morally corrupt humans, suck out their souls, and usher their evil asses to hell. She’s been doing it for four thousand years and wouldn’t mind saying she’s damn good at it. On top of that, she’s got a best friend who wouldn’t betray her for anything in the universe, a gorgeous male demon friend who gives her good lovin’ whenever she demands it, and while she may not have the respect of her fellow demons (they are a very competitive, extremely spiteful lot who enjoy cutting each other down for sport), she wouldn’t trade her life (?) for anyone’s. That is, until the Announcement. In the blink of an eye, everything Jezebel has ever known has changed for… the worse. And that’s saying a lot considering she lives in hell. Her boss is taken out of commission and the new guy in charge is a complete dick who vows to make hers and the lives of her brethren a… shall we say… living hell? As if that’s not enough, she is reassigned to a department she totally hates and her supervisor is a total micro-managing bitch. After one particularly horrible assignment, Jezebel decides to make like Jerry McGuire and quits. In the guise of a mortal, she flees to Earth, steals a demon protector pendant from a witch, and goes to New York to live her new life. So what does an ex-succubus do in a big city to earn a living? Become a stripper, of course!
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Grade: A+
Goddamn, I love this book. Sure, it’s sacrilegeous, seemingly controversial on purpose, incendiary, and a little over the top, but there’s just something about this Garth Ennis graphic novel that hooked me from page 1. It’s like the Davinci Code except it has sex, gory violence, mayhem, intrigue, blue streak cussing, real characters with heart, mothafuckin’ Arseface!, oh and it’s not boring as all hell. I don’t know about y’all, but that sounds like a rollickin’ good time to me. If that’s not enough to reel you in, there’s also Steve Dillon’s art work: crazy, colorful, visceral, eye-popping, gritty… I cannot find the words to describe this man’s work without sounding like a creepy fan girl. The combination of Garth Ennis’s tour de force (yes, I did just type that), dark-as-night, yet-true-to-heart storytelling combined with Steve Dillon’s beyond brilliant artwork just puts this series way and above any graphic novel I have read in the last fucking ten years. Yes, I am a Garth Ennis fan girl, but you know what? I’m totally cool with that. I mean, how can you NOT love a book with a character called The Saint of Killers?
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I’ve been telling myself that I wasn’t going to read anything written by Laurell K. Hamilton anymore, but as soon as this book was available for pre-order on Amazon, I jumped right on it. I’m sick in the head, I know. This anthology includes fourteen short stories, eight of which have been previously published and only six of them new. It’s a total rip-off, right? Fortunately, I have never read any of them. One of the stories features a younger Anita Blake who has never met Jean-Claude or Richard and was refreshingly ardeur-free. She was just a necromancer, period. It gave me hope—however fruitless—that Ms. Hamilton will crawl out of her own ass one day and write Anita Blake the way she used to be. Not that I’m holding my breath or anything. After all, I’ve already given up hope that Firefly will ever come back. The other stories vary in quality from so-so to pretty good, but none of them really jumped out at me. I have to say that while I enjoyed reading this book, it almost felt like a chore. But hey, I enjoy vacuuming, so maybe I am a masochist. Every story is accompanied by a short little explanatory note from Ms. Hamilton herself, the tone raging from bitter to ha-ha-famous-author smugness. As I read the notes, I realized, “Wow, I really don’t like this woman,” but I’m going to keep reading her books, anyway, even though they suck. Why, you ask? Just shut up and read the review.
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