Vampires and fairies take the demons down one by one.

Publisher: Bantam Books (Random House)
Pages: 417
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 978-0-553-82557-2
First Published: 2010
Date Reviewed: 15th September 2011
Rating: 3.5/5

Please note that Lee Carroll is a name for the husband and wife team, Lee Slonimsky and Carol Goodman, and thus when I reference Carroll I am alluding to the both of them.

Garet Jones was just a jeweller when she stepped into an antiques store that she later found didn’t actually exist. The owner gave her a box, wanting her to open it, but when she looks inside it weird things happen. However it’s not so much the box at this time, but those who seem out to destroy the city that is on her mind. And who is in the right, the vampire or the fairy king?

Black Swan Rising is a mass of different ideas, stories, cultures, and time periods put together in one book, and while the first half is relatively weak and relies far too much on contemporary elements, the second half is rather special and moves away from reality to become a proper fantasy. Drawing on tales as far apart as Dracula and Swan Lake, Carroll builds a story that will see an ordinary girl take on the extraordinary.

A lot of work has been done to make the book up-to-date so that things from our era – such as Twitter, the usage of LOL on the Internet, and IPhones – are mentioned, and while it makes the book accessible to teenagers it grants the book a very short shelf life. There are also times where the contemporary just does not work, for example when a bad guy is about to unleash evil and this gets compared to a particular basketball player. It may be humorous in its own way, but it jolts you out of the story for a moment especially if you’ve never heard of the player before, which you don’t want happening when you’re speed-reading to find out what’s going to ensue.

For the most part the fantastical elements are those well-used by a lot of contemporary paranormal fantasy writers, and so many similarities can be drawn with books such as The Iron King, Jasmyn, and The Forbidden Game. However there comes a point where a true originality takes over and it is stunning. Carroll uses physics to a good extent in the book, and episodes, such as the one in the water, are quite simply excellent. So too is a later episode on land that is in a way related.

The writing is strictly okay. Garet uses the word “though” far too often, and Carroll could do with using a thesaurus instead of using the same word several times over on one page. The romance is also just all right, because the set up is rather yucky; the idea of someone being with a person who’s already slept with the family tree isn’t very nice.

It is the maturity of the latter stages of the story that make it a worthwhile read, because the writers haven’t been afraid to shock and write material that is gritty, evil, and sometimes downright disgusting yet very good – for this last one I refer to the conclusion of the water episode, it put me off my food but I couldn’t stop reading it.

It is also the concoction of history – factual, legendary, and fiction – with fantasy which makes Black Swan Rising end well and make it a book in which you are truly looking forward to the sequel. That Carroll used an older heroine – Garet is twenty-six – means the story moves a lot quicker because there is more knowledge of the world in advance; and there is a good state of confusion for the reader at the end, where you know enough, but not all, and are therefore happy to want to read on.

Black Swan Rising isn’t perfect by any means, but although it shares a great deal with other books, there is a real sense that this is just to help set some ground before it flies off in a new direction in the next book. And if it does, more power to it.

It may take a while to get into it but if you throw caution to the wind, as Garet does, you shouldn’t be disappointed.

I received this book for review from Transworld Publishing, Random House.

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Are you sure you know who you are?

Publisher: Peirene Press
Pages: 99
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-9562840-5-1
First Published: 2006 in Austrian; 2011 in English
Date Reviewed: 25th August 2011
Rating: 4.5/5

Original language: Austrian
Original title: Die Kinder Beruhigte das Nicht (That Didn’t Reassure the Children)
Translated by: Tess Lewis

In this collection of short stories, Hotschnig examines identity, it’s loss, and the desire to find or create it.

In Maybe This Time, the locations never appear to be what they first seem – neither do the people, or indeed the narrators. The effect it has is similar to what happens when a near-sighted person takes off their glasses. One moment you can see everything clearly, or at least you think you can see clearly. Then you take off your glasses and everything is blurry, in fact sometimes the more you try to focus, the harder it becomes. And then a bit later you might realise that some things are clear again – it’s only a few things, those close up, but you can see them even better now than you could with the glasses. The stories in Maybe This Time are layered, and you’ll likely only ever understand some of it, and you’ll likely have a different idea of what’s happened than someone else.

This is a lot of what works about the book, the mystery. Like Peirene Press’s other releases, Maybe This Time is a short book that stays in the mind much longer than many long books, but because of the abstract nature of it you’ll be pondering on it even longer than, say, Tomorrow Pamplona. There really is nowhere to establish your bearings for any period of time and when you do think you’ve a grasp on what’s happening something that doesn’t relate to your idea pops up.

And before you know it, just as you think you might be getting somewhere, it’s ended. In fact some of the stories don’t even span two pages. Hotschnig will not provide you with an explanation either, and there are no conclusions in his tales.

The stories are very poetic, and although you have to take into account the translation (by Tess Lewis, who has made splendid work of the descriptions) it is hard not to believe that in Austrian German the effect would be similar.

And speaking of the descriptions, which are so detailed and given you a real sense of life as though you are an art gallery patron who has viewed the same work for an hour and have thus notice the smallest of brush strokes, these too help the stories sound poetic. Truly the book is poetry in prose.

The stories are about loss of identity, which makes a lot more sense than the stories themselves for their abstract structure. Because the general theme is so specific the book favours a dip-in approach rather than the usual recommended single sitting of Peirene Press. That’s not to say you can’t read it all at once but the characters can become blended together. Then again, judging by that general feel, they could be one and the same!

Each of the narrators is male and the book has a definite masculine feel to it. And there are some very strange and sometimes spooky things that go on, for example the last story is reminiscent of the book, Before I Fall. It would appear that each one is searching for something – themselves, certainly, and in different ways, but also a better world. Where the man in the last story keeps meeting people who know him for different reasons and in what seems to be a different sort of guise, there is the sense of crowds and the rush of people going about their day.

In fact, there is an atmosphere of expectation in the stories. The characters want or need to act as expected and it is this that runs most perfectly alongside the goal of Hotschnig to present identity in today’s world.

As someone who openly accepts that they have only come to a bit of an understanding of the book, and would only be prepared to discuss with others a smaller part of that bit for fear of being totally wrong I must say that rating this book is most hard. On the surface you have a collection of mostly mundane stories, on another level confusing ones, and on a third deep stories with a powerful message. Please excuse me for taking everything into account when I rate it.

Maybe This Time is marvellous, and Hotschnig very clever. So clever, in fact, that he has left this reviewer baffled. Highly recommended, particularly for those who can read it in a group.

Translated by Tess Lewis, received for review from Peirene Press.

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The past comes back to bite you in the arse, and that doesn’t refer to the sex.

Publisher: Carina Press (Harlequin)
Pages: 197
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-4268-9001-7
First Published: 2010
Date Reviewed: 11th August 2011
Rating: 4.5/5

Keri Daniels is going to get promoted – if she’ll fly back to her childhood home and interview the publicity-shy author who happens to be the man she left twenty years ago for her career. If she doesn’t get this interview she’s fired but if she gets it, well there’s no saying what will happen in the process. After all, she left her ex-boyfriend heartbroken and he’s not going to make it easy for her to get the interview. And he might also make it less easy to leave the second time around.

Exclusively Yours is the first book in the Kowalski series and it is as strong as the later-released Yours To Keep. What I love about this series is the family element. If 50% of the book is about red-hot chemistry, and Stacey truly does write character matches that you can believe in, then the other 50% is about the value of family. So much time does Stacey spend on developing, for example, the children in her books, that you feel just as attached to them as you do the hero and heroine. You can become totally engrossed in the family, and when the romantic couple are getting comfy and in walks a kid with a stream of words about how another is going to give someone a swirly in the toilet, as everyday as it is, you can’t help but smile. For prosperity, here is the afore mentioned quotation:

“Uncle Joe,” Bobby yelled. “Brian got ice cream in his hair and then Danny and Joey said they were going to give him a swirly to wash it out and Brian tried to kick Joey in the pee-pee and-”

For this, the first book in the series, the plot has more scope and falls on its feet slap bang in the middle of a well-used but continually well-loved idea – the return of the one-who-got-away. What’s interesting is that both the major characters have a lot of money and status, albeit that one stays away from the culture of the wealthy, but the book never makes this a focus in the way that so many other romances do. Where often the wealth of a character rules the story, in Exclusively Yours it is merely a factor of the character’s personality.

The chemistry is, as mentioned, red hot, and it is incredibly easy to see why Stacey has sexual encounters occur so often because the book would not be at all realistic without them. The other characters are great, each is a fully developed person of fiction, and the secondary romantic couple fits the story well and compliments the main one. Stacey deals with a good few relationship issues and concludes them well without ever suggesting that her way is the only way or that everyone will have a perfect happy-ever-after.

…he had a trace of what men were allowed to call character lines…

A quick bit of research for anyone not familiar with the culture presented is recommended, because ATVs (quad bikes) and very close family relations are a major part of the series in general, and a word should probably be said about the respect towards parents that has crumbled in our world – because the mother’s word being law for everyone including the adults can take some getting used to. As a Brit I don’t know if the picture in my head would match reality, but the world the Kowalskis inhabit is a far cry from my own estranged society.

Keri smiled back at her, remembering the curling iron and aerosol days. If the EPA had shut down their cheerleading squad back then, global warming might have been a total non-issue today.

The setting is simple, almost the entire book takes place on a campsite where there are few things to do (though this does mean there’s more time for sex) but because of the number of people there is never a time when the narrative becomes boring. Even the characters that don’t have a plot are interesting in themselves and the amount of time devoted to dialogue is large but never questionable. Walking to and from a caravan to a campfire, and repeating many of the same trips in quad bikes, has never been less dull.

Exclusively Yours is a brilliant beginning to what has become a continually strong series and is highly recommended to all, romance fans or otherwise.

I received this book for review from Carina Press.

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The truth can haunt you.

Publisher: Bantam Press (Random House)
Pages: 451
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-593-06708-6
First Published: 7th July 2011
Date Reviewed: 31st August 2011
Rating: 5/5

Sarah left Laurie after he’d decided to sleep with her friend because he couldn’t understand her [Sarah’s] depression over giving birth to a stillborn baby. She travelled to Sicily with her sister in order to get away from everything and it’s there she meets Alexander and his son Jamie. Alexander’s wife has left him after a turbulent marriage and no one knows what’s happened to her, but to Sarah that’s not as important as the feelings she is starting to have for him. When Alexander suggests she move in with him and Jamie and live in the village of Burrington Stoke, where outsiders are not welcome, she joins him on impulse. But the mystery of the wife is far from over.

Douglas has created a work that binds different genres together into something quite extraordinary. What’s intriguing about it is the way in which it’s told. Douglas favours a sort of detailed abstract style – there is plenty of detail in it but sometimes it feels as though she’s left things out, the not so important things, even if in actual fact she hasn’t. It’s a unique style and means that you come away with a completely different experience than you do with so many writers who are hard to tell apart from style alone.

The story is well plotted. There is never a dull moment, during the mundane activities Douglas never lets her narrator stop thinking. The book takes place over several months yet it could just as easily have been a few days for how quickly it moves, and rather than be strange this aspect is interesting. It shows how rapidly problems can escalate.

Now Sarah is a difficult one to place on the spectrum of good or bad because she is clearly affected by the death of her child, and the reader can see times where her judgment is affected because of it where she can’t herself. Because her depression continues throughout the book one only knows her in this state. Yet a few things she does makes you wonder how much is due to her trauma and how much is due to that usual feeling of jealousy in love. Does what Sarah does sometimes illustrate control from outside, her mental state, or a spiteful character?

The book dissects the idea of a perfect living situation and shows how undercurrents can produce more harm than situations generally thought to be harmful. When everyone is living in everyone else’s pockets, everyone seems to know everything. But this feature of the village actually introduces the situation where no one actually knows anything and had there been true discretion the mystery might have been solved a lot quicker. Lives lived in public produced more secrets.

There is so much detail and thought given to the twists in the plot and the red herrings. Unlike a lot of books where at least some of the results are obvious early on, in The Secrets Between Us you really can’t say for certain what’s happened or who played a part. It’s like a whodunit only in pure “literary fiction” style and without the detective narrator.

The characters and their secrets affect the reader’s knowledge, as the reader only ever knows as much as Sarah does about Alexander. In this way the book’s title takes on a second meaning – not only are there secrets between the couple, those secrets spill over to the reader.

Some things are never used in the plot, such as the similarities between the wealthy mother and her daughter. When Virginia discusses her theories with Sarah never does the irony of the situation come into play, whether in discussion or in thought. And an idea about police involvement doesn’t get resolved.

But the few negatives are nothing when placed in the whole. Douglas is an extremely talented author whose ability to spread out a plot over a vast number of pages without once waning, still has this reviewer in awe. When she does exploit the idea of drama she still keeps a hold of the element of realism and possibility and so the book is truly spooky. And even though it’s spooky you just can’t stop reading it.

You will take away with you knowledge – the knowledge that you still have so little knowledge about the characters, which is something you don’t actually realise until you think back on the book. Douglas had you going there for a minute, thinking you know everything, but you don’t. Those secrets that were between you and the book are actually still there. And that feeling is incredibly satisfying.

The Secrets Between Us is for anyone who is looking for one of those elusive blow-me-away books, those that are off the scale for reasons you could never quite explain.

I received this book for review from Transworld Publishing, Random House.

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A person can change, but only if they want to.

Publisher: Carina Press
Pages: 120
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-4268-9154-0
First Published: 1986
Date Reviewed: 5th May 2011
Rating: 3/5

Carroll loves Alan, but she wants more spontaneity in their relationship, more spark. Alan feels he’s losing Carroll and so quickly shakes up routine. But is it what Carroll really wants and is Alan happy enough to stay that way?

What I liked about this book, and something that is new to me in my recent foray into romance, is just how ordinary the characters are.

Reading a book written in the 1980s about a couple in the 1980s took a bit of getting used to because, having had the late 1990s as the time in my life when I really started noticing the world, reading about the 80’s fashions as being sexy was against everything I grew up hearing. But to have a book discuss a relationship without mobile phones or laptops, and with kettles whistling on the stove, was something that soon became a treat. As a society we know how much we rely on technology and a lot of us do yearn sometimes for the old days, so a book with an eternal theme and without the flat-screens was wonderful.

The story is just as ordinary as the characters, a person changing to try and win over the person they believe they are losing, and therefore the appeal is general. I expect most people would identify with it, at least to some extent. I know I did. But there were a few things that did irk me greatly.

One was the story, because it was so ordinary and simple I couldn’t help but feel it should have been shorter. I know that chick-lits can be the same but the writing style of this book favoured shortness, shorter than it’s 120 pages, and there weren’t enough different “episodes” to it. The other major issue I had was with the spelling of Carol as Carroll (really?) and the shortening of it to Caro, which just sounded weird.

There is character development but although in reality it would be considered important, on paper it came across as minor and was too quick, and I think I would’ve liked to read more about the couple’s relationship before Alan opted to change himself.

The changes themselves though, albeit extreme, I could well imagine. In fact being a woman who is completely thrown by sudden romantic gestures by an otherwise unromantic man, I related to it perfectly.

There could have been more in this story and the lack of secondary and tertiary genres definitely hindered it, but I will say that when compared to many romance authors (for I have started several books only to abandon them) Greene’s writing style is finer. There was a great little scene in which a fever (as in the sickness) creates a dream sequence for Carroll with Alan that was rather fun to read about, and the very end dialogue is great.

No More Mr. Nice Guy is a sweet story with a universal theme. It’s incredibly, incredibly ordinary, but that might just be the point.

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