CBR2 Book 72: "Eternal Kiss of Darkness" by Jeaniene Frost

Publisher: Avon
Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: August 3rd, 2010
Date finished: August 4th, 2010

Mencheres is an ancient Master Vampire, and "older than dirt". He is actually older than several of the pyramids, and while he once held amazing powers, like visions of the future, telekinesis and the ability to track people all over the globe, he now sees only darkness when he tries to see the future, and most of his powers seem to be fading. As he is millennia old, he is pretty much determined to meet his death soon.

Kira is a private detective, whose mentor taught her that her goal in life should be to "save one life". When walking home from a stakeout early one morning, she hears a commotion, and runs to see if she can help. She sees Mencheres being tortured by five ghouls, and they nearly kill her. Mencheres is touched that a human would risk her life to save a stranger, and saves her with his super powerful blood. Unfortunately, he is unable to use his vampire mesmerising powers on her afterwards to make her forget, she appears to be immune to them. While keeping Kira captive, worried that she will tell the police about the strange new supernatural world she has discovered, he grows more and more fascinated by her.

Kira, who is at first scared and confused by all the new things she is discovering, has always had very strong instincts, and fairly quickly starts trusting Mencheres, reasoning that he could just have killed her right away if he wanted to. He uses some of his blood to help her chronically ill sister, and when he lets her go, she is unable to forget him. This leads her to a vampire strip club where Mencheres' oldest enemy manages to set things up so that Kira will almost certainly be killed. Mencheres has no choice but to turn her into a vampire.

Mencheres' enemy soon has him framed for arson, multiple murders and worst of all from a vampire point of view - of leaking a video showing the existence of vampires on YouTube. Kira and Mencheres have to prove his innocence to the rather old-fashioned and extremely conservative council of Law Guardians, which is not easy considering his nemesis is a Law Guardian too. But Kira has had experience with dirty cops before, and refuses to let Mencheres sacrifice himself for her and die just because he's convinced his lack of visions is a sign he is nearing the end of his long existence.

While not as good as First Drop of Crimson, Eternal Kiss of Darkness was still a fairly entertaining read. Of all of Frost's novels, I would put it somewhere in the middle. There was a bit too much of Mencheres' self-pitying "I'm so ancient and some of my powers are gone and I may as well just curl up and die". Towards the beginning of the book, it also got a bit tedious that Kira was the only one for millennia who dared to interrupt him, or shush him, or generally stand up to him, just because she didn't realize how old, and rich and super powerful he was.

Kira was a very good heroine, though. Smart, strong, independent and no beating around the bush accepting her attraction, and later love for, Mencheres. Refusing to suffer his self-pity, and also being very understanding, but not overly judgemental when he tells her about the many terrible things he's done in his looong life as a vampire. She adores her sick sister, is kind to her dead-beat brother and adapts to a scary and fairly shitty situation in a very admirable way. She is absolutely what saved this book from being a bit long-winded in places.

CBR2 Book 71: "Mistress of the Art of Death" by Ariana Franklin

Publisher: Bantam Books
Page count: 512 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 22nd, 2010
Date finished: July 25th, 2010

Someone is killing children in 12th Century Cambridge, and the Jews are being blamed for it. Since the Jews are forced to hide in the sheriff's fortress, Henry II can't tax them, and is losing a lot of much needed revenue. He also has to deal carefully with the Church, after that unfortunate incident where his Archbishop, Thomas Becket, got brutally murdered by some knights who misunderstood the king's wishes. Adelia, a Mistress in the Art of Death (a Medieval pathologist, basically) is sent to Cambridge with her eunuch manservant, Mansur, and one of the chief agents of the King of Sicily, Simon of Naples.

As women are not allowed to practice medicine in England, and they are afraid she may be accused of witchcraft, Adelia poses as Mansur's assistant. He only speaks Arabic in front of the patients, and she "translates" the doctor's orders and carries them out. With the help of the local prior, who Adelia saves during their journey, the little band of investigators are housed safely in Cambridge, given a capable housekeeper, and Adelia is given access to the bodies of the dead children. It quickly becomes clear to Adelia and Simon that the murderer's most likely a Crusader, and the local tax collector is both a former crusading knight and very interested in the case and Adelia's findings.

Mistress in the Art of Death is a very entertaining read, with a fascinating cast of characters. The author freely admits that some things in the book are anachronistic. Adelia is a stubborn, fiercely intelligent and prickly heroine. She feels out of place with most women, and is loathe to suffer the foolishness of people in general. Simon of Naples is a much more patient and pleasant man, who has realized that by appearing gentle and a bit simple one can find out a great many things, and being met unassuming and non-threatening, but very good listener, most people will spill their secrets unwittingly.

The book's tension builds gradually. The various suspects are presented fairly early on, but there are enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. The author manages to present a lot of history while still writing a compelling murder mystery. While the book started a bit slowly, it did not take long before I had trouble putting it down.

CBR2 Book 70: "Love Letters" by Katie Fforde

Publisher: Arrow Books
Page count: 464 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: July 21st, 2010
Date finished: July 21st, 2010

First of all, I have NO idea why this book is called Love Letters. There is not a single letter written in the entire book. There are phone conversations, the occasional e-mail and text message is mentioned, there are lots of books, but at no point does anyone sit down and write or read any form of letter, love or otherwise. I have absolutely no idea why this title was chosen for the book.

The book is about Laura Horsley. She's 26 years old, still a virgin, by her own account extremely dull, and does very little but work in a tiny bookshop and read. The bookshop she is working in is closing, and a pushy literary agent decides that Laura is the perfect person to help her niece set up at literary/music festival near the country house the niece lives in. Laura is initially very reluctant, but gets carried away. One of the possible sponsors for the event misunderstands her during a conversation and thinks she personally knows Dermot Flynn, a reclusive Irish author. He demands that Flynn come to the festival or he (the sponsor) won't provide any money.

Laura sets off to the Irish countryside to track down Dermot Flynn, her favourite author of all time (she even wrote her dissertation on his two novels). She doesn't realize that the reason he is known as a cranky recluse is that he's had writer's block for the past 15 years. When she arrives in the tiny village where he lives (where he's also appearing at a festival), she gets massively drunk to summon the courage to talk to him (as he is totally gorgeous and sexy and brilliant) and he promises to come to the festival if she sleeps with him.

Being dreadfully drunk, Laura does end up in bed with him, but passes out. When she returns to England, she learns that Dermot has decided to teach a writing course at a local university, and wants her to be his assistant for the course. She ends up reading a huge amount of manuscripts to help him, and continues to fall for him. One of the students at the writing course lets slip to the newspapers that Dermot is going to appear at the literary festival Laura is helping to organize, and Dermot is furious, as he wanted his appearance kept secret until the last minute. Everything seems to be going badly wrong.

Love Letters, despite not being about letters at all, is a perfectly fun summer read. It's nothing profound or brilliant, and Laura is a bit of a boring character to begin with. She also seems to come out of her shell and blossom surprisingly fast, all it took was getting riotously drunk in Ireland, apparently. For someone who starts out extremely shy and introverted at the opening of the book, she is very different at the end. There are some fun characters, but it drags a bit in places, and I would have liked to see how the romance developed a bit more.

CBR2 Book 69: "The Girl Who Chased the Moon" by Sarah Addison Allen

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 19th, 2010
Date finished: July 20th, 2010


Emily Benedict is 17, and comes to Mullaby, North Carolina to live with her grandfather after she is orphaned after the death of her mother, Dulcie. Her mother left Mullaby long ago, and has never told Emily anything about her past. While Emily knows Dulcie as a woman who founded schools, worked for human rights and every worthy social cause imaginable, in Mullaby it seems like everyone pretty much loathed her, and not everyone is happy to see the former prom queen's daughter settle in town.

Someone who does not hold the sins of the mother against the daughter, is Julia Winterson, who was bullied by Dulcie, and who had a pretty hard time growing out as an outcast in Mullaby. She has both internal and external scars to show for it. Now she is trying to pay off the mortgage on her father's barbecue restaurant, and is counting the months until she can sell the restaurant at a profit, take the money and leave town - to set up a bakery and forget all about Mullaby and her past. She tries to welcome Emily and take good care of her, as she knows others in town will not be as nice.

On her first day in town, Emily has a panic attack and is saved by a kind, young man named Win Coffey, but it quickly becomes apparent that neither her grandfather nor his father want them to have anything to do with each other, due to something that happened with her mother and his uncle in the past. Sleeping in a bedroom where the wallpaper changes depending on her mood, and puzzled by the glowing lights in the woods around her grandfather's house, Emily is determined to at least solve the mystery of what happened between her mother and Logan Coffey.

Julia has several painful issues to get over from her past in Mullaby, and bakes amazing cakes and pastries as a form of therapy. When the man she loved passionately as a teenager seems determined to charm his way back into her life, she is confused and troubled and does not know how to handle the situation.

The Girl who Chased the Moon is the third book by Sarah Addison Allen I've read and reviewed for my blog. All her books have certain similarities. They are set in small American towns, feature one or several female characters, a quirky supporting cast, magical realism, and some romance. All her books are easy, comfortable reads, but none have been quite as magical and delightful as her first one, Garden Spells. Still, well worth a read.

CBR2 Book 68: "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon

Publisher: Fourth Estate
Page count: 656 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars
Date begun: July 15th, 2010
Date finished: July 19th, 2010

Josef "Joe" Kavalier arrives in New York in 1939, and meets his cousin Samuel "Sammy" Klayman for the first time. Josef is a Czech refugee, sent to America to escape the Nazis, and all he wants is to make enough money to help the rest of his family escape as well. Sam promises to get Joe a job, and once he realizes what a talented artist his cousin is, he convinces his boss to let them try to create a superhero comic that can rival Superman. Sammy changes his name to Clay, and soon they have created the anti-fascist Escapist, as well as a large number of other popular and extremely lucrative comic book heroes.

Sammy writes the stories, and Joe creates the art for the comic books, but as their creations become more and more successful, it becomes clear that they are being exploited, and get a minuscule share in the profits from their work. Joe saves every penny he can, and spends most of his free time trying to get his family moved from Prague to New York, with very little luck. He falls in love with a lovely bohemian girl, but constantly feels guilty that his family used their last savings to have him sent to America, while they constantly suffer worse and worse conditions under the Nazi occupation. Sammy spends his money on his mother and grandmother, and tries to come to term with his sexual identity.

When it becomes clear that the ship of Jewish children that Joe has spent large amounts of money to help to America has been sunk, he abandons his cousin and his girlfriend to enlist in the navy. During his self-imposed exile, he learns that Rosa and Sammy have gotten married, and even after the war has ended, he stays away from them, until an unexpected event prompts him to try to reconcile with his loved ones.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay explore what is know as "The Golden Age of Comics", and as the wife of a man who is a huge Jack Kirby fan, I knew a little bit about this time period and how the writers and artists usually got horribly exploited by their publishers, making a pittance compared to their counterparts today. While the story is about comic book creators and superhero comics, I do not think you need to know or be interested in such things to enjoy the book. As well as an exploration of the rise of the comic book, and especially superhero comics, as a medium, it is so many other things.

The only bit I wished was shorter, and am not entirely sure what Chabon was trying to do with, is Joe's experiences in Antarctica during the Second World War. Here I thought the story lagged terribly, and while some of it was necessary for Joe's further development, it did not need to take up as big a part of the book as it did.

I had heard many great things about the book, and because of this, my expectations were high. I'm glad to say that the book lived up to my expectations, and that while it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2001, it is not in any way a difficult or heavy read. All the characters are well rounded and feel real, even minor supporting ones who you wouldn't think made that much of a difference. Both Joe and Sammy are extremely likable protagonists, and for the most part, the book is a joy to read.

CBR2 Book 67: "Early to Death, Early to Rise" by Kim Harrison

Publisher: Harper Collins
Page count: 240 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: July 14th, 2010
Date finished: July 15th, 2010

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ONCE DEAD, TWICE SHY, THE FIRST MADISON AVERY NOVEL!

Madison Avery may seem like a normal teenager going to high school, with her purple-tipped hair and her sneakers with skulls and crossbones on them. However, Madison is actually dead, and an important supernatural entity at that. Madison is the dark timekeeper, and her job is to control Reapers, dark angels sent to Earth to kill people who will turn out to do horrible things that will damn their souls, before said people are able to commit said actions. There is also a light timekeeper, who tries to protect the same people. Madison was killed by the previous dark timekeeper, who wanted to prevent her from succeeding him - even though she had no idea this was intended for her.

Now she has a fancy amulet she doesn't really know how to use, but means she has a human body. She also has a small entourage consisting of a dark Reaper meant to protect her, a former light Reaper who disagrees with the light timekeeper and is now neutral, both of whom are supposed to pass for foreign exchange students, a tiny former guardian angel who speaks mostly in limericks, and her best friend, who she seems to be developing feelings for.

Madison disagrees with her stated job description, and doesn't just want to send Reapers to kill people who are destined to commit horrible acts before giving said person a chance to change their mind. She doesn't believe in predestination, and when she finds out that Nakita, the Dark Reaper with her is supposed to kill a high school kid set to release a computer virus that ends up killing people, she insists that they go find him and try to talk him out of things before he needs to be killed. Since her new timekeeper powers aren't exactly under her control yet, she and her Reaper posse don't actually know precisely who the guy is - they have two suspects, and not very much time to figure out which of the boys is set to become a hacker with multiple deaths on his conscience, and which one is just the innocent friend.

I actually liked Early to Death, Early to Rise better than Kim Harrison's first young adult novel, Once Dead, Twice Shy, as the first novel was a bit confusing and mostly served as setup. Now that Madison and the supporting characters of the series, as well as most of the world-building has been established, the story flows better and is a much more entertaining read. I would not recommend picking up book 2 without first having read book 1, though.

"The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed" by Patrick Rothfuss

Publisher: Subterranean
Page count: 72 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 12th, 2010
Date finished: July 12th, 2010

The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed is a picture book, beautifully illustrated by Nate Taylor. It features a sort of fairy tale. It's definitely, absolutely NOT for kids. Unless those kids are slightly older and fond of darker stories. I saw this book described as Calvin and Hobbes meets Coraline, and that's a pretty good take on it.
The Princess lives in her marzipan castle with her best friend, the stuffed bear Mr. Whiffle. They have lots of fun and exciting adventures, but at night, in the dark, there is the thing under the bed. The book has three different endings, at three different points. It's not very scary, or terrifying, but it does get rather twisted towards the end.

I thought it was extremely entertaining, and am beyond happy that the copy of the book I have is a very early ARC printed up by Patrick Rothfuss himself, and signed by both the author and the very talented artist. I was lucky enough to win the ARC as part of Patrick Rothfuss' Worldbuilder's Raffle (for details, see: http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2009/12/worldbuilders-2009/) and was absolutely delighted with it as a prize.