A great read, good for light reading on the beach or just relaxing. Destiny wakes up with no memory, but soon it all comes back to her so I won’t be spoiling too much by telling you that she is a dragon. She has tons of cool magical powers and the ability to transform into a giant sea dragon.

She meets a hunky guy who is strong, handsome, arrogant and a complete asshole, so of course she starts to fall for him. She has not one but two urgent quests involving helping her mom, and her dad, and some poor helpless children. But it’s the people trying to hunt her down and kill her that make the book really interesting.

Lots going on in this book, enough to keep your interest but not too many twists or characters to get confused. A very easy read, exciting and action packed with a good romance kicker.

I just finished reading the latest Drake sisters novel written by Christine Feehan and I definitely liked it. It was really different not just from the other Drake sisters books, but from most other romance books. It wasn’t the normal lighthearted fantasy that you would normally see in a love story.

I was very shocked that they abused her character the way they did, but it did make for a very touching story. It was very interesting read, just really surprising that they would go to such levels of abuse for a main character in a Romance/fantasy novel.

I was excited to pick up this book on several levels. I needed to find out finally what happens to Elle and the completion of the story of the seven sisters. I wanted to understand her magic which had been hinted at being all of the talents; I wondered how they would combine the talents, and why Elle wasn’t a more dominant figure with such powers. They had also foreshadowed so much in the other books about her and Sheriff Jackson so I was looking forward to see how they get together.

I was really shocked at the beginning of this book that someone as powerful as Elle could get captured. Once the abuse was done, it was touching to follow someone who had gone through such torture. I expected it to be like watching a car wreck and not being able to look away, but really her struggle to try to come back from the brink, and her strength and determination were encouraging.

The emotional turmoil was a bit of a downer, but it is a good story and great characters to follow. The paranormal fantasy parts were very interesting and I was glad that they showed all the sisters and their partners using their powers and being such an integral part of the plot. In all, this book isn’t as light and fun, but it is a great read and worth staying up late for!

Let me say first I enjoy fun and easy reading just like the next gal. But by my tastes, this book was terrible. I would not recommend it, even as light reading.

In picking this book off the shelf I was captured by the synopsis on the back jacket. It described a strong modern heroine who’s life is turned upside down by a hero from the future, come to rescue her from imminent assasination. Reminiscent of Terminator, (yes, the first one) which is one of my favorite movies of all time. But I always thought that Sarah Connor should have gotten to keep her hot guy from the future.

What a let down this book was! Disregarding the time traveling and the genetically engineered talking wolf (which I thought were very cool), this Warrior from the future was a mindless brute who thinks of women as objects and jacks off to lingerie. Ewww.

The writer Angela Knight has talent and some good ideas, and should run with those, but her idea of love and sex is VERY different from mine. Yes, some romance authors prefer to have a “manly man” for their lead men, and have bossy guys who take charge. But some just go too far. It seems to me stories which show strong dominance like this just prove to show how man can be mean and cruel and think that a woman secretly loves it. Yuck!! Most women do not like to be brutalized or domineered, so I don’t really find it that sexy in a romance novel either.

In this story, I believe Knight was trying to have her Warrior change and grow, and eventually shed the cave man image and learn to care and be considerate. But really, it was difficult to get past the cruelty and belittling behavior to get to the romance part. Even the happy ending couldn’t save this one for me.

Great book!

It’s not often that I’ll start out a blog review like that…but this book really surprised me. The story was extremely well thought out, the characters likeable (or not, as appropriate), and the action kept the story moving along.

Now, I have to preface this by saying that this is a Geek novel. There are very specific references to computer hardware and protocols that would probably turn off non-Geeks. Fortunately, I am a Geek (Badge #L33T ;-), and I appreciated this book all the more for the accuracy of the technical details. Suarez is himself a computer security-type Geek, and that comes through in the detail of the book. It was like he was talking both of my primary languages (English and Geek).

Would this book appeal to non-computer types? Maybe. My wife is interested in reading it based on the parts of the book I’ve described. She’ll probably just gloss over the technical stuff that she wouldnt’ find interesting, which is probably fine. It’s not critical to following the story. In fact, you could probably remove it and the story would be fine. I could easily see a movie being made from this novel and the writers/director leaving out the technical details to increase mass market appeal.

So what is so appealing? It’s a typical What If? scenario. What if a computer genius invented a program (the “Daemon”) that could evolve and adapt to new scenarios to meet whatever goal was programmed into it? What if that program was spread across the Internet and couldn’t be eradicated by virus cleaners? And what if the creator of the program was a mad genius bent on changing social norms based on advanced technology?

That’s what this book is. It’s an excursion into a computer doomsday scenario–the typical AI takes over the world–but with so much thought put into it that you find yourself wondering if the Daemon is such a bad thing. Of course, killing people, which the Daemon has no problem doing, is bad…but is targeting evil corporations that make millions by swindling others, is that a bad thing?

That’s the cool part here. Imagine an evil corporation that is run by several generations of a single family and has a small board governing it. Who’s to stop that company from preying on the poor, the weak, the gullible? If it’s a private company, there’s no way to buy youself in. The best way in the door is through the computer. Take over the company’s computers, hold all of its information–and therefore, money–hostage…and you can do what you want with them.

And now, what if the creator was dead so that there’s no legal repurcussions possible and noone to tell you how to turn it off.

On top of that, throw in some other really cool, geeky stuff:

• A virtual reality that controls the meatspace
• Self-driving and autonomous cars
• Secrets to accessing the daemon’s virtual world hidden in maps in First Person Shooter games.

All that raving being said, there are a couple of bad points…but are they really bad? One, there’s a twist at the end that was a bit annoying. Two, that twist–and a couple of other important points–sets up the forthcoming sequel. I’m thrilled that there’s a sequel planned, but it feels like this book is too dependant upon it. I wanted a more definitive conclusion to this book.

Some have compared this book to some of Michael Crichton’s work…I guess that’s fair. But the two things I like better about this book than I do most of Crichton’s work are that 1) the technology is more accurate/believable (which I’m sure some will dispute) and 2) I don’t get the technophobe/”the world is going to end if I use a toaster” feeling that I always get from Crichton (particulary Prey). Of course, I’ll keep reading Crichton since they fall into my favorite genre…but given two books on my nightstand, I’d pick up the Suarez one first!

Daniel Suarez is definitely on my NewBookAlerts list!

For some good suspense romance, check out these three books; Blue Dahlia, Black Rose and Red Lily, which together form the “In the Garden” trilogy by Nora Roberts. This is a great easy-to-read story that I found captivating on many levels. First, the romance is divine especially with such strong female leads. Second, you have to love a mystery as entrenched and spooky as a hundred-year-old poltergeist. Third, the interesting development of the characters as they meet, become friends, and then grow to be a family.

Each of the three books covers one of the three different women, all from different stages in their lives. In the Garden is a nursery where all three women work. The three of them become roommates and close friends. In the midst of some major plant analogies and academic gardening technique, you come to understand these womens’ lives, their struggles and their victories. As they help one another, each grows and learns in life and love. Family is a major theme.

I always love it when a good light romance is spiced up with a some excitement, and what better than a ghost running mad around the house? The Harper Bride ghost starts out singing nice sweet lullabies and ends up causing trouble. The ladies must find the answer to this mystery and help out the ghost before it goes postal and brings down the household. The three books are sequential, you must read them in order for the mystery of the ghost to unfold.

The romances are good, all different and interesting, and not cliche. As the lives of the characters intersect with each other the story that unfolds seems very real to me. The different relationships and people’s actions and dialog are authentic. Classic Nora Roberts with her great plots, believable characters, and talented writing skills.

In Blue Dahlia, there is a middle-aged mom who is a widow looking for a new start. She meets a rugged landscaper who drives her crazy. In Black Rose, the lead is the nursery business owner, an established, wealthy, mature woman with three adult children and two previous marraiges. She starts playing detective with an ‘absent-minded professor’ delving into her family heritage to figure out more about the ghost. In Red Lily, there is young new mom just starting out. She has the hots for the boss’s son, and she’s trying to keep her hands off!

All three stories are fun and kept me burning the midnight oil reading to find out what happens next! As someone who does NOT read horror books, The Harper Bride ghost was not scary enough for me to be turned off or frightened. Just enough to keep things interesting. I hope you find this triology as entertaining as I did! Happy reading!

This is an old book, first published in 1983. Nevertheless, it maintains a lot of the characteristics I enjoy about Koontz’s most recent books. It’s amazing to me that he’s been at it for more than 25 years and that his first books already had those characteristics I like. Maybe you think this is a bad thing rather than good; maybe it shows a lack of authoristic development that his newest books don’t show radical improvements over his initial ones. I don’t think so.

First, I think the books have improved. While the characters in Phatoms seemed quite accessible to me and I feel like I got to know them, I certainly didn’t develop as strong a connection as I have to more recent characters like Odd Thomas and those in Life Expectancy. It’s also hard to explain, but I think the prose is tighter and more accessible to the general populous. This is a good thing because Koontz writes popular fiction. He doesn’t try to write The Great American Novel (TGAN) with each of his books; it seems that he’s more interested in writing books that people actually enjoy reading. Those that provide a temporary escape from the stresses of daily life. This is important because it’s taken me the better part of 20 years to realize that I don’t need to write TGAN and I would be comfortable writing popular fiction.

On to the actual story…this is more of a straight horror novel than his other books. In fact, in the afterword, Koontz regrets writing this book inasmuch as it got him labelled as a horror writer. That being said, I consider it a thriller more than a straight horror novel. While the basic premise of the story is basic “these people are trapped and the unnatural killer feeds on them and you know that more people are going to die every 30 pages or so,” I was quite pleased with the additional scientific explanations that most horror novels leave out. While the scientific explanations did push the bounds of credulity, I was able to accept them as a bonus to an otherwise fairly standard horror novel.

There were a couple of down points to the book, though. First, there were too many central characters for me to keep track of. While Koontz does put in the reminders you need to remember the characters (e.g. the deputy sheriff said, she shook her long brown hair), I still couldn’t track all of them. The two main characters are a woman and her younger sister. These were easy for me to track and I enjoyed getting to know them. The problem came in with all of the police officers. Most of the rest of the cast are sheriffs, deputies, etc. and were too similar for me to follow. This is one of those things that I haven’t noticed in his more recent books.

*MINOR SPOILERS*

There were also a couple of plot points that I just didn’t understand. There is the whole side story of the biker gang and the wife/child killer. I waited and waited for these stories to come into the main trunk of the story and claim some importance, but they never did. Or, at least, I don’t feel that they did. Both the killer and the leader of the gang do end up talking to the “Ancient Enemy” and promise to carry on his work…but otherwise they seem completely tangential and I would have liked the book better without them.

Overall, this was a reasonably good book and I did enjoy reading it. Nevertheless, I would recommend most any of Koontz’s more recent dozen books over this one. So if you’ve already read most of his recent books (like I have), and you can pick up a copy of this book cheap, do so and marvel at the writing machine that is Dean Koontz.

If you are looking for another fantastical YA Young Adult Sci Fi / Fantasy series like Eragon or Harry Potter, which will take you to a whole new world then this book is for you! I love books that start with a young character and put them through the ringer. In this book, a smart tough teen learns she has abilities she didn’t know she had, not magical talents, but loyalty, courage and strength.

Holly Black has enormous writing talent and her characters jump off the page. I just eat up a book when I feel like I really know what the characters are going through. The main character in this book Kaye starts off a “normal teen” (although tough as nails and head-to-toe in black) and ends up in a very different place. Or maybe some of the same places, but with her eyes opened. Whatever. An entire world opens up to her, and she sees lots of things she doesn’t understand. She runs into challenges and opportunities, and can’t tell the difference. She meets many new friends and foes, and you can’t tell which is which.

One mention, this story is not a fairy tale where cinderella gets a godmother to wisk her away and lives happily ever after. If you are looking for a light-hearted romance then this book is not for you. It’s a bit dark starting with the tough life of a teenage girl (was anyone happy in their teens really?). The main character has to work for it, and she doesn’t always know where she is headed. There are acid trip-like experiences with a grisly Unseelie court. There is love interest, it’s just not the gush-and-gab type, it’s more of the on-razors-edge type, like Twilight. Kaye does meet a great guy, or two. The romance is just a piece of the larger plot unfolding.

Overall, this is a great coming of age story, with several twists of hope and frenzy mixed with whimsical magic and terror.

If you like Dean Koontz the way I do, you’ll like this book.

The thing I like most about Dean Koontz books is the characterization. I can’t always put my finger on it, but there’s usually something about his characters that draws me in immediately so that I get attached to them and can’t put the book down. This book was exceptionally good in that regard. I listened to this book on Audio CD and I remember thinking about just the first 10 minutes that I was already hooked on the characters.

This book reminded me a lot of my favorite Dean Koontz book, Life Expectancy. I think that was the first Dean Koontz I read and the reason I keep reading them is the great characterization I first found in that book. The main characters in Relentless are so much fun that you can’t help but smile even when they’re under mortal threat by seemingly supernatural bad guys. The fun banter and jokes between the family members (and dog) make you wish that you could maintain your humor under stressful situations.

<possible spoilers ahead>

The other Koontz book this reminded me of was Dark Rivers of the Heart. This connection is due to the conspiracy theorist slant of both novels. In each, a government agency has basically unlimited resources and are on a personal mission to kill the main character(s). There is lots of conspiracy theorist goodies in here like the main female character’s parents who have an underground bunker in the desert complete with deadly booby traps by the front door.

But it keeps going back to the characters. Even the weird parents in the bunker have a great sense of humor and joke and play, albeit in a potentially offensive way to vegetarian tree-huggers.

In all, I think this is not on my top five list of favorite Dean Koontz books, along with Life Expectancy and Odd Thomas. Which is really good, because there have been a couple of books of his recently that didn’t grab me and I was almost getting to the point of expending my limited reading time on other authors. But this book has renewed my love for Koontz books and I anxiously await the next.

WereDragons, WereArachnids and Beaststalkers, oh my!
This latest (book four) to the Jennifer Scales books was a great addition to an interesting YA Fantasy Fiction series. It’s an easy read if you can keep all the characters straight! If you haven’t read the first three, I WOULD NOT recommend starting with this one. There is just too much history and you will miss out completely unless you start with book one, “Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace”.

This being book four, they don’t spend much time re-explaining things. In fact, this was a very different take on these characters because they reviewed most of the old scenes from another perspective. Because of this, the whole book has a very different voice and I missed Jennifer.

But I thought it was very interesting, to see inside the heads of the nemises and understand their justifications for their own actions. It tells each person’s life starting about age 15. What a different way to view battle and war, one that allows for perspective from all sides. You can see that most people have a history and reasons for the things that they do.

The tale doesn’t just go over old ground; there is more to cover including a huge confrontation!!
As usual, Jennifer is in the middle of it all but is in control of none of the various factions.
She’s just caught in the struggle for dominance between several bloodied, angry, war-torn sides. This book shares more from those sides and more history allowing you to see the tangled web that Jennifer is stuck inside.

In the next book, I look forward to seeing more about Jennifer and her choices, romances, and growing up….

As I’ve noted elsewhere in this blog, I enjoy the books of Preston and Child, both together and individually. I (usually) particularly like the Agent Pendergast books because the character of Pendergast has been so well developed and is just fun to read about. His unwavering calm and high-society manners in any situation are always entertaining.

That being said…this has been my least favorite Pendergast novel to date. I think this is for a number of reasons…but it’s hard to pin down. First, and foremost, it’s about zombies. Yes, zombies. Here’s the weird thing…I haven’t had any problem in the past with mythical beasts terrorizing a New York museum or artificial intelligence machines falling in love with their creators. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless…I just couldn’t buy the zombies.

There is the whole Voodoo slant to the book that just didn’t jibe with me. While it was interesting to watch Pendergast reveal specific knowledge about Voodoo spells and charms, that could not even come close to eradicating the pain experienced on every page that contained the annoying little Voodoo expert.

There is the whole “D’Agosta is angry” and “Laura doesn’t like/trust Pendergast” lines that get somewhat tiresome since they are carry-overs from the last book.

With all that being said, I was actually quite pleased at the ending. As usual, the ending was well setup by the main content. Preston and Child have the entire story conceived beforehand and everything weaves together into a neat little package. The “bad guy” (or at least the main one) wasn’t a surprise to me; I thought that they telegraphed that one a bit too much, but the intricacies of the plot were nice. The zombie-ness of the book is overturned by a solid ending.

All in all, not my favorite Preston/Child book, but still a good read. It certainly hasn’t deterred me from their work; I look forward to the next release by either author.

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Another thing that really bothered me was losing Bill Smithback in the first five minutes. Because in those five minutes (and throughout the rest of the book), you find out that he was actually a pretty good guy and the cynical reporter asshole that he normally played wasn’t his true self. He finally shared his true goodness with someone and then he dies. I think what made me most mad about this was that when the book opens with him talking about how in love he is and how perfect his life is, I immediately said (out loud), “Well, he’s going to die.” And so he did. About two minutes later.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing for an author to kill off a character, in fact, I think you have to from time to time to keep it interesting. It just sucked the way that it happened. (This is actually all a nice compliment for the story because I cared enough to be annoyed.)