Pleasurable Reading

Ok folks...this post is coming with a warning/disclamer...it's pretty adult.  This post is gonna be in a bit of a different vein, but for a good reason.  Now don't worry, this is not the direction this blog is going in, it's just a bit of something different that struck me.  The following is for adults, it is sensual in nature, but I feel it relates to reading, especially for me in a very real way.  I know right now that this will not be everybody's cup of tea and I respect that.  For the rest of us, I hope you in enjoy it in the way that it is intended.
Ok now that is out of the way, I would like to introduce you to Hysterical Literature.  It is a series of video's with accompanying stories and essays that feature women reading from a favorite book while being..well...pleasured under a table.  I know it sounds really dirty, but I found it to be oddly mezmorizing and in all honestly I totally understand the connection between books and all different forms of pleasure.  Here are a couple of my favorites (ps NSFW)

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I'm not 100% sure why this particular project stuck with me.  Maybe it's the stories, maybe it's the non pornographic yet still sensual way women are portrayed, maybe it's the books.  I don't know...but there you have it.  If this post is not in your wheel house, fear not I will resume my regular bookapalooza in the next post...until then.  HAPPY READING EVERYBODY!

Panic Reading!

Ahhhh!!!!  We just signed on our new house and now I am in a bit of a panic freak out mode.

So if anybody needs me I will be hiding under the covers with my face buried in a book pretending that the real world of 30 year loans doesn't exist.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Go Away Reality

I am being forced to act like an adult this week and I have to say I am NOT enjoying it.

I'm gonna go read and pretend that I have no pressing responsibilities like work, keeping a roof over my head or anything so mundane as food in the fridge.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Out Of The Box

The Firehouse book club strikes again!  Today I'm gonna ramble about a book recommended to me by my driver, and if this is the quality of books she chooses, I will be reading everything she passes to me!  The book is Room by Emma Donoghue and it was INTENSE!  First things first, a quick synopsis followed by a good long rambling.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The story is told excursively through the eyes of five year old Jack...which is a bit weird, but works really well for this story.  Jack has lived his entire life in an 11x11 foot place called Room.  He lives with his Ma and is very content with his itty bitty life, mostly 'cause he doesn't know any better.  In this Room Jack and his Ma eat, sleep, play, learn, and live as best they can.  At night Ma puts Jack in a wardrobe to sleep until Old Nick is finished with Ma.  We start the book on Jack's fifth birthday and Ma starts to let Jack know that there is more to the world then Room.  This freaks Jack out as literally all he has known was the four wall, floor and skylight that is Room.  Ma does everything she can to teach her little boy, but only so much can learned in such a restricted environment.  Ma tells Jack that she too used to be young, that she had a mom and dad and brother.  She tells Jack that when she was in college a man tricked her and kidnapped her.  She has been held captive for 7 years, giving birth to Jack apx two years into her captivity.  Ma comes up with a plan to escape, but Jack has a bit part he needs to play and he is understandably reluctant.  The plan is to pretend Jack has died from a sickness that they have been faking for a while and when he wraps up the "body" to bury that is when Jack will escape and get help.  The plan...while having a few flaws to hinder it...ends up working and Jack and Ma are finally rescued.  The second half of the book is how the two adjust to being in the world.  For Ma it is coming back to life after 7 years, for Jack it is discovering how to live in a world he didn't even know existed.  Jack and Ma stay in hospital for a while, working with psychologists and doctors to try and adjust to their new life.  Ma's family comes to visit with different reactions.  Her mother is overjoyed to have her daughter back and does her best to try and adjust, taking a shine to Jack almost instantly.  Her father, whom divorced her mother after the kidnapping is happy to see her, but can't accept Jack as anything other then proof of what the monster who took his daughter did to her.  Ma's brother, his wife and young daughter do their best to make Jack feel like a normal kid.  As expected there are many bumps in this road to regaining life.  Ma has a melt down and takes pills which lands her in a real hospital.  Jack goes with his grandmother and step grandfather and I think this is my favorite part of the book to watch this weird little family learn to work together.  Ma is released and she and Jack move into an apartment that is part of the program to get them back into life.  Jack wants to go back to Room, understandably wanting to find comfort in familiarity.  Ma finally agrees and Jack realizes that Room is no longer home and Ma finds some bit of closer.

World Building - The first half of this book is set in Room and the author did a phenomenal job in making this space both a suffocating prison, and a place a little boy calls home.  The rest of the book is set in a contemporary time and place.  Watching Ma and Jack's world expand from an 11x11 room to a whole town was wonderful and very well done.

Story - The story was simple, elegant and complete.  I kept turning the pages, immersed in what would happen next to this little family.  The story felt fairly realistic and well researched.  I think what I liked most about the story was the fact that it showed simple every day things in a whole new light.  Having it told through the eyes of a five year old boy who had never seen the outside world gave a very different, yet very honest point of view.  This is the kind of story that reminds us that all humans have a story to tell and the perspective is everything.

Character - I felt that the characters were the strongest point in this book.  Every single character felt very real and very honest which is very hard to do in a story that could very easily get angsty.  I thought the relationships between each character was valid and appropriate.  I am so so so so so happy that the author showed a perfect mix of compassion, restraint and empathy when it came to every one of her characters.  Ma was in turns strong for herself and her son, and yet had some real issues that I imagine one would have in the situation she was thrust into.  Jack was a great voice to show the reader how confusing and also how simple the every day world can be.  Ma's family showed us the whole spectrum of emotions and reactions people would have when a loved one comes back from such a horrific ordeal.  Even the various doctors, nurses, specialists and reporters had a very authentic feel.

Editing - I don't have a whole lot to say about the editing other then it was border line perfect.  The pacing was wonderful, the story had a beginning, middle and end.  The book progressed in a realistic and understandable manner...it was just really well edited (and written).

Family Dynamic - I LOVED the various reactions that Ma's family had to her return and to the fact that she now has a son.  The fathers reaction, while sad, is understandable.  Seeing Jack must have been a constant reminder that he could not protect his little girl from the ravages of the sicko who took her.  Her brother doing his best to treat Jack as a normal kid...had it's issues but it was wonderful to see him do his best to accept Jack at face value.  Ma's mother and new step-father where just great.  I love watching Jack's grandmother try to balance her shock and awe at the weirdness of Jack, with the need to love and help him.  Her solutions to some of his more different problems where both loving and practical.  His step-grandfather was the best at just going with the flow, understanding that sometimes this sheltered little boy just needed some space.  The relationship between Ma and Jack was the absolute best.  The author somehow managed to walk that fine line between Ma being protective, loving and the only thing to matter to Jack without crossing over into weird/gross/uncomfortable territory.  It was truly a story of a mamma doing what ever it took to give her son the best life possible.  This doesn't mean she was perfect, but she did the best she could.

Psychology - Being in the field I am in (medical/EMS/Fire) I see all kind of...well pretty much everything that the human condition has to offer.  I have also in the course of my education had to take numerous psychology classes...so while I don't consider myself an expert, I think I can say I have some experience with human psychology.  A lot of times having this knowledge is a downer when I read or watch something, because to many authors ignore the practicalities of human nature so that they can tell a fantastic story.  Not so in this book.  The author really seemed to know her stuff and the varied reactions, time to adjust, mood swings, really just about everything these characters experienced was spot on.  I really really appreciate the effort that went into making this book so believable.

Voice - Like I noted before, this entire story is told in the voice of five year old Jack.  At first it took some getting used to...in fact for a while it was down right annoying, I mean seriously do you have to name EVERYTHING!  As the book progressed though you could watch everything unfold through this unique perspective.  I think what struck me the most was the sheer honesty that this perspective brings.  Most five year olds I know are not that adept at keeping things to themselves and a boy who has only had interaction with one other person is not all that great at lying.  The perspective brought a complete, authentic and different story to the reader and I am very glad that the author made the bold choice to go this route.

Overall Impression - This book was emotional, intense, though provoking, sad, happy, crazy, awesome, it was just really really really well written.  It is not an easy read.  I made the mistake of getting into it on some down time at work and I seriously had to hold back tears on more then one occasion.  As intense and traumatizing as this book is, there is so much hope in it that it balances out perfectly.  I recommend it to anybody looking for a good, emotional read and has some private time to just blitz through it 'cause once you pick it up, you won't put it down.  I give it 8 out of 10 Egg Snakes and can't wait to watch the movie...and pick up another of the authors books.
Happy Reading Everybody!

One Messed Up Christmas

I decided to start of my Christmas reading this year with something a bit on the irreverent side...ok... a lot on the irreverent side.  I had been feeling a wee bit stressed and just wanted something that  required little thought and a bit of relief.  To this end I picked up The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore.  Did it give me the holiday break I needed?  Let's find out, but first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

First things first, this is not a family tale of magic and wonder, it is the complete opposite and has a fair amount of all the stuff that makes a book rated R so you have been warned.  Pine Cove, California is a picturesque town that is still small enough to be considered charming to outsiders.  The denizens of this town are varied and a bit...well...crazy.  The main players in our tale are Dale, an "evil" and developer, his ex-wife Lena, Tucker a free-lance helicopter pilot and his fruit bat Roberto with a thing for Lena, Mavis the old broad of a bar tender (with a penchant for spiking her fruitcake), Theo a pot-head constable and his certifiable wife Molly who when she off her meds morphs into Kendra Warrior Babe, complete with sword wielding prowess.  Lena and Dale get into it one night, resulting in Lena accidentally killing him with a shovel.  Little Josh see's this and as Dale is dressed as Santa, his little child mind thinks that Santa is now dead.  Meanwhile the angel Raziel (who must have whatever form of ADD angels can have) has been tasked with fulfilling the Christmas wish of one child.  In between consuming human treats Raziel wanders over to the chapel that is hosting the Lonesome Christmas party where most of the town has gathered.  Taking the wish literally, Raziel raises all the dead in the area so that "Santa" will be alive.  This results in the dead coming back as very interesting zombies and terrorizing the party.  All sorts of crazy hell breaks loose which I cannot even begin to describe.  Little Josh freaks out and tells the angel he just wants everything to go back to how it was.  Poof, the angel grants the Christmas wish and all is well.

The book itself is a completely twisted mish-mash of personal stories interwoven with the main one, making it impossible to really sum up, but that is part of its charm.  The book was fun, violent, weird, crude, vulgar, silly, insane, but fun.  It is the type of book one reads when they are in that weird sort of mood for a tale that makes your life seem normal in comparison.  This book will make even the most messed up of holiday's seem sane in comparison.  Besides all of the weirdness and un-PCness, the author still managed to keep the gist of the holiday spirit through out the book.  The entire time I was reading, I got the sense that the people of Pine Cove were trying their hardest to be good people and to ensure their friends and family were doing ok regardless of what was going on. The characters were the best part of the book. each one having their own quirky past and interesting present.  I will forever have a soft spot for my schizophrenic Molly/Warrior Babe and I will probably read more of this authors books just to read more of her.  There is really not much more I can say about it other then if you like this sort of book, it fits in wonderfully for a little bit of a saucy holiday read.  I give it 7 out of 10 lasagna's and recommend it to anybody who likes something a bit different and does not get offended even moderately easily.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Clint Eastwood Grandma's With .45's

Time for another rambling YAY!  Today I'm gonna share my super deep thoughts on the second book in the Stephanie Plum series, Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich.  Read this one because of a combination of needing a bit of light heartedness, need to get the books back to their rightful owner (there coming Kelsey I promise!), and I just really enjoyed the first one.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

We find our favorite bond girl Stephanie Plum still single, still broke, still in need of skills, but a little less desperate this time around.  She is put on the case of Kenny Mancuso, a guy who shot his friend in the knee, as the Vinny the owner of the bond company (and Steph's cousin) felt it would be an easy nab.  This all goes very quickly down hill when people start showing up dead.  Meanwhile,

Stephanie's special friend Joe Morelli (the guy she chased down the last time around) has been reinstated to the police force and is working on a special case that may or may not involve the people Stephanie is following. He also likes to show up on our girls doorstep with plenty of innuendo's, but mostly he ends up helping.  One of the people involved in the case is Spiro Constantine, a super skeevy guy who hires Stephanie to help protect him and his funeral home and to find some missing caskets.  To add to all the chaos, Steph's spunky grandmother get's a gun and starts "helping" her granddaughter. The longer the hunt goes on, the more we realize Kenny is as crazy as they come and he more then enjoy's inflicting pain on people.  We discover that Kenny and co have been smuggling discarded Army weapons and selling them on the black market.  This all culminates with Stephanie and her grandmother held by the bad guys in the basement of the funeral home, only to escape when granny goes Clint Eastwood on the baddies ending in their arrest.  All is well that ends well and Stephanie and her peeps live to star in the next book.

Obviously a ton more detail happens in the book, but I think you can get the gist of things from the above synopsis.  I enjoyed this book as much as the first one for many of the same reasons.  Again the combination of realism, down homeyness, light heartedness, and on occasion sheer over the topness just really work for me.  I LOVED the added extra grandma in this book, she is spunky, crazy, yet still age appropriate if that makes any sense.  She and Steph had a definite bond that the rest of the family just don't understand, and the fact that Stephanie doesn't automatically write her off because she is older makes me do a happy dance.  Stephanie and Joe's relationship makes me smile, it is going much slower then I would have originally thought, but it is not drawn out for the sake of the book or series, it's just how it is.  I like their frustration with each other on a professional level, with him wanting to protect her...and at the same time probably toss her from the top of a
skyscraper...again fairly realistic.  Cars once again play a significant role in the book, with Stephanies being stolen early on, forcing her to use her uncle's boat of a Buick with some hilarious results.  The issue of violence, especially against women was shown again, not as much as with the last book, but again shown as a bad thing that should NEVER be ignored, allowed, or excused.  I liked this book as much as the last one and felt it was a very natural progression.  I felt things moved forward at a reasonable pace with Stephanie learning, but still not super girl, with relationships moving forward, but not magically perfect and with plenty of stories left to tell.  I give this book an 8 out of 10 severed members...read the book, it will make sense.
What is your happy series go to?  What other books combine realism and humor in a good way?  Why did I write this post like a lingo hipster chick?

Aussie Flapper Detective Of Unusual Prowess

I have had the book Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood on my list for a while.  It is the first in the Phryne Fisher Series and sounded like a good time.  I actually started reading it because I found a series based on the books while my MIL was in town (she loves a good mystery).  After watching the show I was a little leery as it was a bit trite, but the book (as it usually is) was much much better.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Phryne Fisher is a thoroughly modern 1920's girl.  This modernness is helped greatly by her very newly acquired wealth, that her family has gained thanks to the Great War causing enough people between her father and a title to perish to finally gain it for the family and move to London.  Phryne does not however forget her poor roots in Australia and does everything in her power to use her money to her own ends.  In this vein she decides to try her hand at detective work when a family friend asks her to check on their daughter Lydia.  They are concerned because on her last visit she appeared very sick and are worried her husband is trying to poison her.  Phryne heads to Melbourne and secures herself the best room, in the best hotel, a stunning wardrobe, and the services of Dot, a somewhat naive girl, who none the less keeps Phryne in some sort of order.  Phryne uses her money and status to get invited to numerous parties and learns that cocaine seems to be the drug of choice among the elite.  Phryne meets with several people who have had lives of loved one ruined by the stuff, and she agrees to help them find the legendary King of Snow, who has a very tight grip on the drug trade in Melbourne.  Phryne meets Lydia who appears to be an overly clingy, nervous, socialite who requires attention at all time.  Oddly enough in between her clinging and whining Lydia appears to have a very shrewd business mind.  Lydia also confides in Phryne that she has been feeling sick after eating chocolates her husband buys her and suspects poisoning.  Phryne's friend, the female and awesome Dr. MacMillian assists her in patching up her friends and analyzing the various substances Phryne sends her way.  Eventually after much shock and mayhem Phryne, along with her cabbie friends Bert and Cec find the store front of the cocaine ring.  Phryne follows that product and discovers her sexy Russian dancer/lover has been caught and held.  Phryne gets caught as well and we discover that the King of Snow is none other then the clingy Lydia.  She had been setting up her husband to die in an apparent botched murder of herself, and to take over the business.  Phryne's friends come to her rescue, but discover there is not much left to do.  The case is solved, the bad guys are put away and Phryne treats EVERYBODY to an elegant luncheon to wrap things up.  She decides that she likes detecting and declares her intention to keep at it for the foreseeable future.

When I first started that book, I was a little put off at the sheer amount of costume changes that main character performed.  It felt like for the first two chapters that this was going to be a book about a fashion junky who just happened to at some point solve a mystery.  However once I got through the first couple chapters it started picking up in a really good way.  There were many things I liked and a couple of things that bugged me, lets start with the buggy stuff and get that out of the way.  The biggest issue for me was that the lead character Phryne was a super character, meaning she had little to no trouble getting anything and everything she needed to solve the case.  She had all the money, and no concern for cost.  It was established quit quickly (hey cool two q words in a row...sorry weird side obsession there :-) ) that Phryne had all the skills and training any human could possibly want.  She trained with martial arts masters, can fly planes, learned to drive on the race course, and all kinds of other skills that most people would not have readily available.  She was also of course beautiful, daring, charming an capable of making friends to supplement the very few skills she herself did not mysteriously possess.  This makes for a bit of an eye rolling disbelief when once again, she reveals some secret skill she possesses.  It made solving the crime too easy, because any barrier that was presented was so easily overcome.  This and the preoccupation of describing every stitch (including the underwear) of clothing Phryne wore, and everything she ate, got very tedious

sometimes.  All of that being said, Phryne was not a boring character, she was written with an irreverence and disregard off all social niceties that made her a crazy force.  I think in real life she would drive me absolutely crazy, but on paper she is a lot of fun.  The case itself was pretty cool, with two or three other side plot/mysteries and the 1928 Australian setting was unique and refreshing.  The side characters were especially well done, being varied and fairly realistic.  Each character had a fully formed personality and Dot especially added some great flavor to the book.  This is not a children's book in any way shape or form.  There is unapologetic sex, drinking, gambling and entertainment, there is blatant talk about desires and wants, and as an adult it was nice to read a book that did not dwell on these aspect in a sordid way, but made it clear that the main character was very self possessed and did not judge herself, or care if others judged her on antiquated ideals of purity and demureness.  Phryne was not stupid either, while she enjoyed sex, and alcohol, it was always tempered by her own intelligence, and her awareness that she not be used, or get herself into bad situations just because it was fun.  Overall the book was good enough that I could get past some of the more eye rolling moments and enjoy the ride as a whole.  I recommend it to anybody who enjoys a good mystery, a fun period piece, and a strong modern heroine.  I give it 7 out of 10 diadem garters and will be picking up the next book shortly.  A quick word if you ever watch the TV show based on these books, it is very very very different.  It keeps a bit of the flavor, but the show itself was a bit trite and predictable and is not a good indication of the fullness of the book.
How do you feel about characters who are super special?  Do you like liberated characters...or is too much liberation a bad example?  How convoluted is this rambling?

College, Classics, and Quotes

In my perusing used book stores lately, I have been lucky to come across some older books that are much harder to find in the traditional book store.  One of these books was Tam Lin by Pamela Dean one of the Fairy Tale series edited by Terri Windling (whom I ADORE).  The story is based on the Scottish poem The Ballad of Tam Lin, which being one of my favorites mad this a very intriguing book.  What did I think of this ambitious work?  Well first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Janet Carter is starting college at Blackstock College, a fictional school in Minnesota.  She has wanted to go there since she was young as her father is a professor there.  She meets her roommates, Molly, a fellow book lover and Biology major, and Tina, a more pedestrian type who is also a Biology major.  Janet herself is an English Major.  The book follows Janet through out all four years of her college career and focuses on her classes and her and her roommates relationship's with a group of beautiful, yet odd students.  The girls all end up in relationships with various members of the group and all endure various problems while in them.  A lot of the book is just about Janet's classes, her love of books, and her various strange interactions with various people on campus.  There is also an allusion to a ghost of a girl who discovered she was pregnant and killed herself, an act which was duplicated years later by a second student upon learning she herself was pregnant. We also see various professor's and advisers who have a weird sort of control over various staff members and students.  Eventually Janet breaks up with her distant, yet smart and funny boyfriend Nick and ends up with his much more human seeming friend Thomas and after a single night with him, despite precautions, ends up pregnant.  After much convelutedness we finally get the story of what is going on with this mysterious group.  The Faerie Queen and her cohorts have gotten bored with living in their realm and have come out, along with some of the humans who live with them, yet never age.  They have decided for some reason that this little Midwestern college is a good place to hang out.  We learn that almost every student the three girls have encountered is one of the ageless humans and that they have been around so long that some of them even knew Shakespeare!  The exception to all of this is Thomas.  Thomas is a normal human, who stole one of the Faerie Queens horses and became her tithe to Hell, something the faeries have to pay every seven years.  According to Thomas this has played out many times over the years, and the only way to be saved is to have a pregnant lover hold on to him as he changes forms.  Janet is at first incredulous, and then accepting as it actually explains several odd occurrences.  She agrees to keep the baby and saves Thomas in the traditional manner.  The story ends with the Faerie Queen stating that since their was no tithe, the next time they will take two.

This is one of those types of books that grows on you the more you think on it...or at least it did for me.  Originally I did not like it very much at all.  It is very convoluted, slow and the author comes across very pretentious with all of her babble about the classic literature.  She has a tendency for her characters to speak whole paragraphs to each other in obscure quotes from books that only a professor of classic literature, or somebody who is obsessed with them would ever be able to recognize.  This makes the story very difficult to follow on occasion.  The author for some reason felt the need to describe every building and layout of the campus multiple times, even ones that had nothing to do with the plot.  A lot of what the characters did and said was vague at best, and confusing at worst.  All of this leads to a long, slow read, that leaves the reader frustrated.  The other problem was I am very familiar with the story of Tam Lin, and I still could not figure out where the story was going, I can't imagine somebody not familiar with the ballad trying to follow the plot.  On the other hand, the story of Janet and her roommates and their college experience was fairly accurate, especially for the era (the early 1970's).  The uncertainty, the finding oneself, the exhausting course load, the trying to get along with all the various personality types, all very familiar to the college crowd.  In that sense it was a very simple, girl goes to college and survives the experience type of story.  When you put the two together, you get a story about a girl and her roommates and mysterious friends, (most of whom speak in forms and ways that would never happen in the real world) trying to survive college, with the occasional fae experience.  The action only really picks up near the end of the book, culminating in essentially the whole ballad being played out literally for us at the very end. I felt like this book would have been much better if it had been shorter and a bit more to the point. After all of that you may ask why I feel the book grows on the reader.  Well now that I have finished the book, and it has been several days, I still feel it is pretentious and slow and a bit confusing...but it also has a way of staying in your brain.  All the mentions of various books and the character obvious passion for them have me ready to quit work and just stay home and read Chaucer, Dante, Austen and of course Shakespeare.  The idea of the fae running around, living everyday life is always and intriguing idea and has me day dreaming about meeting up with my own personal otherworlder in various situations.  I'm not doing a very good job explaining what I mean, but...yeah...so overall this book was frustrating, but I am glad I read it.  I would recommend it to anybody who has a degree in classic literature, has a bit of patience, and understands that a person can like a book much more after they have put it down for a while.  I give it 6 out of 10 thundering steeds.

Have you ever liked a book better a couple days after you have finished it?  Is it possible to not really enjoy the reading of the book, but still enjoy it living in your head?  Is it possible for me to ever really get what I mean from my head to the page?

Carnival Of Souls

Being the awesome person that I am, occasionally somebody will randomly buy me books, or lend me books, or chuck books at my head that they think I might find interesting.  Usually this is accompyyed by, "hey this book sounds really weird, I think you'll like it."  I'm not 100% sure what to make of this, but I have gotten several good books this way, so I'm not gonna knock it.  One book I aquired in such a manner is Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard.  As I was looking for one last October book and I had looked at this one several times, I was a happy girl.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer.  He aquired these powers for a purely scientific purpose and sold his soul to Satan to obtain the secrets of bringing the dead back to life.  As with all deals with the devil, this one is imperfect and Cabal is stuck trying to perfect the process.  He soon realizes that his lack of soul is hindering his expermentation and so goes to Hell to make a deal with Satan.  After a bit of haggeling, Satan gives him a Diabolical Carnival, a ball of his blood to create and control it and a year to get 100 souls in exchange for his own back.  Cabal goes and releases his brother Horst from an old crypt after an incident turns him into a vampire.  Horst is able to actually understand humans and is able to help Cabal put together an appealing, if insane event.  Several little events happen along the way, but the majority of the story follows Cabal and his quest for souls.  For the most part Cabal only collects the souls of people who were probably headed for Hell anyways, and as long as this is the case, Horst holds his tounge.  Along the carnival route, Satan throws a couple of curve
balls just for fun, but Cabal overcomes them and continues to collect souls.  The carnival finally arrives at the last stop, an idyllic town that is harder to woo then previous ones.  Cabal has only two souls left to collect and is feeling pretty good.  Things start to go very very very wrong when instead of his normal bad soul collecting, Cabal pushes a young woman who has been sleep deprived and exhausted by her new baby to kill it.  In exchnge for her soul, Cabal brings the baby back to life. This henious act disturbs Horst to the point that he starts to oppose his brother.  At the last moment Cabal aquires the soul of a good woman who volunteers to give it up in exchange for her fathers life.  Enraged over this apparent lack of humanity, Horst reveals that he stole a form and that Cabal only has 99 out of the 100 souls Cabal needs to reclaim his soul.  Horst then walks out in the sun, ending his life.  Cabal heads back to Hell to deal with Satan once again.  Noting that he is desperate for the souls of the two women, Cabal makes quit a sneaky trade and recieves his soul back.  His cleverness works and he is able to keep the souls of the two women out of Satan's hands.  He goes home to continue his necromancy research and we see that he has kept the body of what I assume was his wife or girlfriend preserved, giving us the reason he is so obsessive.  A sequal is obvious, but the story is complete.

This was a fun and fairly quick read.  It was a bit scattershot, but got the story across, especially in the second half.  Some things of note.  What I think I liked the best was the fact that Johannes Cabal was technically a Satanist, but not for any religious reasons, it was just the only way he felt he could get what he needed.  He deals with all of the incantation, summonings, ghosts, demons, and other otherworldly things with a detached and logical manner that completley belies most stereotypes we have seen in the past.  Cabal also showed a degree of humanism through out the book that was at odds with his supposed villiany.  Many times through out the book he showed a compassion, that though it was tempered with logic and saracasm, was always present.  This helped with the sheer

horror I felt when he encouraged the young woman to kill her baby, and was a very effective writing tool.  I like stories like this where good and bad is not always cut and dry...does it count as stealing a soul if it was going to Hell anyways?  Do the ends justify the means?  What is the difference between magic and science?  All great quetions brought up by this book.  The writing itself tried a little too hard to be humorus and was at its best when the author just wrote the story, not trying to force the clever humor that only works on occasion.  There were a few bits, especially in the beginning that did not seem to fit the story as a whole, but like I said earlier, this seemed to resolve itself later in the book.  I loved the solution to Cabal's issues with Satan at the end of the book, and I really loved that although Cabal got what he came for, his life is still very far from perfect and he still had to live with the consequences of his actions.  I wish we could have seen a bit more of the carnival, mostly because I LOVE LOVE LOVE circus's and carnivals, especially ones with a supernatural twist.  Overall I reccomend this book to anybody who saw The Devil's Carnival and enjoyed at least certain aspects of it, enjoys a good deal with the devil, or just likes a nice story about the harvesting of souls.  I give this book 7 out of 10 Latex Ladies and will probably pick up the sequal at some point.
What would it take for you to sell your soul?  Do you like books that combine horror and humor?  Why does everybody think I like weird things?

Bond Girl

One of the best things about my friends is that they are all little book freaks like me...well not quite like me, I'm my own special brand of freaky, but still way into books.  The best thing about having book buddies is getting reccomendations and book swaps that happen with fabulous frequency.  One of those books was the start of a series called One For the Money by Janet Evanovich.  It was not a type of book I usually pick up, but she said I would enjoy it and I'm glad I listened to her.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Stephanie Plum is a recently divorced, recently unemployed 30 year old Jersey resident.  She is in desperate need of money, having sold almost all of her possesions (or in the case of her car had them repossessed) just to keep the lights on.  Her overbearing mother suggests that she check with her cousin Vinny to see if he needs any filing done.  Filing is not what Vinnie needs, he needs somebody to track down and bring in people who have missed their trial date.  If she can manage this she gets a percentage of the returned bail money as her fee.  The biggest fish for Stephanie to catch is Joe Morelli, a cop accused of murder...and a guy who has gotten into Stephanie's pants on occasion.  Stephanie being brand new to all of this is coached by Ranger, a pro who takes the poor girl under his wing and trains her the best he can.  With this minimal training and some new supplies Stephanie sets off to catch her fugitive.  One of the tips leads to Benito Ramirez, a proffesional fighter with

violence against women issues.  He takes Stephanie's rejection personally and starts to stalk her.  As the case progresses Stephanie finds herself in situations that she never imagined possible and learns as she goes.  She befriends two hookers named Lula and Jackie who end up giving her information on women linked to Ramirez dissapering.  One of these woman was one linked to the Morelli case.  At some point Stephanie "requisitions" Morelli's car, causing him grief, and being saved by him on occasion.  Eventually Morelli tells Stephanie that he will work with her to clear his name and in return she can turn him in after they get proof of innocence so she can still get her money.  Chaos, intrigue, and blowing up cars ensues. Eventually they think they have everything figured out and Stephanie turns Morelli in.  Unfortunatly when she gets back to her apartment, Ramirez's manager is waiting to kill her, as she knows to much about everything.  She is saved at the last second and all the bad guys go to jail.  Morelli is released, and mostly forgives her for all the grief she understandably caused him and Stephanie decides that she likes the life of a bond girl...at least for now.

I orginally brought this book with me on my road trip to counter balance a couple of books I knew were gonna be heavy...the problem is I could not put this book down to start those.  Lucky for me it is a series so I have more to look foward too.  I think what I liked best about this book is how well put together it was.  The main character had a believable back story, a good motivation to go into this unusual job, she had no super skills, or amazing beauty, or unusual smarts, her only real defining factor was her desperation, and her incredible ability to wrench the good side out of a bad situation. She is not good at her new job and requires a lot of help and training to become even adequate.  By the end of the book, she knows she still has a ton to learn before she can consider herself even a decent bond girl.  The various other characters made perfect sense in their enviroment, right down to the appliance salesman/blind date.  The settings were done in a way that I feel like I could probably navigate my way around this town with little trouble, but the descriptions never dragged on.   I also liked how the author dealt with her women characters.  I know I have been having issuses with a couple of books lately, escpecially ones by women authors, so it was refreshing to see some of these issues dealt with so well.  Stephanie is a belivable woman.  She is of an age of most readers who will pick this book up, she has been through some realistic stuff, and she is dealing with a lot of the same issues the readers are probably dealing with.  The character is not hopless though, she works her way through things with a desperate wit that is both relatable and entertaining.  I liked that while the

character was not a super knock out beauty, she was aware of her attractiveness and owned it. She also awknowledged and owned her own sexuality in a non-destructive way which was awesome.  The other issue I thought was well done was the violence towards women angle.  I have been reading a lot of books where it is condoned, or glossed over, or forgiven, or turns the woman into either a gibbering dehumanzied victim, or a wild, uncontrollable, revenge seeking bitch.  In this book the violence was not glossed over, it was borderline unconfortable in its realism.  The character of Ramirez (the main perpatrator of said violence) was constantly getting off the hook because of his celeberty status and the fact that he mostly beat up women who seem to not matter to society, hookers, poor women, women who did not have the resources to make a proper fuss.  I personally felt that the author did a fantastic job of showing how often this happens in society, and then made sure her woman beater got jailed.  She did all of this while still keeping a fairly light hearted, entertaining narrative that made you keep turning the page.  The few critiques I have relate to the fact that this book was published in 1994 and several plot points depend on the lack of cell phones and internet or Stephanie being a little dumber then need be, but hey that is getting super nit picky.  Needless to say I really liked this book and hope the rest of the series lives up to the first one.  I give this book 8 out of 10 junky cars.
What book(s) have you read and loved on a reccomendation?  How does when a book was written affect it's future readability?  Did my feelings on how women are portrayed in books come out clearly?  Did you see the movie?

What Is Wrong With These People

Hola, how are all of you?  Sorry about the lack of post yesterday, but Hubbin (awesome and amazing person that he is) surprised me with awesome concert tickets and needless to say waking up was not priority after a wild night like that :-)  To make it up to you I will now present you with a rambling so chock full of rants that you will forget all about yesterday...I'm not sure how the two are correlated, but hey whatever :-)  The book is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and it hit all my angry buttons.  This is supposed to be a thriller/mystery so if you have not read it yet and plan to please keep in mind as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The book is written in three parts and alternates between the two main characters (Amy and Nick) perspectives.
Part 1 - Amy and Nick are a New York couple, living in a New York brownstone, with New York jobs, living the New York life.  Amy is vibrant, detailed oriented and sharp.  Nick is laid back, charming, and good looking...or so they try and convince you. Amy and Nick move to Missouri to take care of Nick's ailing mother after they both lose their New York jobs, much to the distress of Amy, who never the less try's to put a happy face on it.  Nick goes to work at the bar he and his sister bought with the rest of Amy's trust fund, coming home to find his wife missing on the day of their fifth anniversary.  This first part of the book show us how Nick and Amy met and got married.  It then progresses from Nick perspective to the investigation into his wife's disappearance and we here from Amy in a series of diary entry's dated from before her disappearance.  Several things do not add up and Amy's diary seems to contradict some of the things Nick claims or even seems to know.  We also find out that Nick is a bit of a dick and has been having an affair with a student from the local college.  Nothing feels quite right and as Nick follows the clues Amy left for their traditional scavenger hunt more and more weirdness happens.  As the investigation progresses it seems that Nick becomes the prime suspect as many of the clues start pointing to him, even though he denies several of them (it makes sense in the book I promise) it all comes down to him.  Eventually Nick realizes that all of the places in the hunt are places that him and his mistress got it on.  This realization makes him realize that Amy is trying to frame him for her murder...
Part 2 - This is the part of the book that reveals the twist...Amy is alive!  Amy, sick of living in Missouri and heart broken over the discovery of Nicks mistress decides to fake her death and frame him as punishment.  She had planned this for over a year and has a stash of cash and a plan.  She takes off to the mountains and rents a cash only cabin and watches the case against Nick unfold.  When things don't happen fast enough, she call annonymous tip lines to make sure her fake diary, full of incriminating information, and tidbits that make look like a monster instead of just the self absorbed douchebag he actually is, is discovered.  She gets her money stolen and is forced to call an old friend, Desi,  who is fairly obsessed with her to help her out.  He ends up keeping her a virtual prisoner under the pretense of helping her, which makes her angry.  Meanwhile Nick has become the only suspect in the investigation thanks to Amy's mechanations and is now desperate to clear his name.  As he digs into her past, he discovers that Amy has a truly vindictive streak and will do anything to exact revenge on people she feels slighted her.  This includes lying, plotting, and even hurting herself to get other people's lives ruined.  It does not even have to be anything big, even a tiny perceived slight is enough to set her off.  Nick realizes that Amy is probably still alive and goes on TV to plead forgiveness in a bid to get her to come home and clear his name.
Part 3 - Amy, who has been following the case closely is moved my the idea she can still be the center of Nick's universe and drugs and kills Desi and mutilates herself to make it look like he kidnapped and abused her.  She arrives home, trying to make everything OK with Nick (who is still a doucebag) and spins an epic story to the police to keep herself out of trouble.  Nick is understandably disgusted by Amy, but when he tries to get the truth out of her, or in desperation to leave her, she announces her pregnancy (accomplished using frozen sperm from an earlier fertilization treatment earlier in their marriage) and tells him she has been setting it up that if he leaves, or tells anybody what really happened she will never let him near his child.  The book ends with everybody miserable, trapped and unhappy.

Whew that was a long one, and does not even begin to describe the sheer unlikability of almost every character in the book.  I have read a lot of reviews on this book (after I had read it for myself) and I keep hearing conflicting opinions, so please keep in mind as I vent my own personal fury over this book, that it is just that, personal.  There are several issues I had with this book, but oddly enough the writing was not one of them.  For the most part it was written fairly well, the plot was laid out in a well thought out manner, and for the most part it even retained a fair bit of plausibility.  Several reviews have also stated that they felt that the point of this book was to show our tendency to try people by the media and how a person can be found guilty on no other strength then a few over zealous reporters who think they know exactly what happened.  I agree with this interpretation up to a point, but feel there is a lot of other crap in it too.  My first complaint is the lack of sympathetic characters.  I get the anti-hero, flawed character concept, but this book seems to have taken it to an unenjoyable extreme.  By the end of the book the only person you can even remotely root for is the horrible, selfish, cheating, self pitying, unable to take any personal responsibility, conflict averse, needy, smarmy Nick who if their was a moral and ethics jail would be it's primary inmate.  He is married to what turns out to be the manipulative, self-absorbed, vindictive, psychopathic lying, murderous, soulless, vapid, vain Amy.  These are just the two main characters in this sordid tale.  All of the supporting characters are also shown to be some combination of inappropriate, crazy, attention hungry, obsessive, slutty, stupid and a plethora of other undesirable behaviors.  This makes for a very uncomfortable, unenjoyable read.  There are a few minor characters that the writer attempts to inject some sort of redeemable value into, like one of the two main detectives Ms. Boney who actually believes Nick about crazy Amy, but overall their was a void of characters to give a damn about.  One of the other things that really bugged my in this book was the horrid portrayal of various women.  Again Ms. Boney may have been a single exception in this, but for the most part all of the women were displayed as the sterotype of all the "bad" things about women.  Amy was obviously the worst, woman who cried rape and violence with a disturbing regularity, undermining the millions of women who are subjected to this horror everyday, but are brushed off as hysterical lying
females because of women like Amy.  Nicks young mistress was portrayed as a slutty whore who did not care that she was potentially ruining a marriage, she was also shown as overly clingy and more concerned about herself then a potential murder victim.  Other women were shown as attention hungry, liars, weak,
incapable and shallow.  The men did not fair much better, being shown as misogynistic, violent, sex addicts who while justified in their woman hate, were completely useless creatures in their own right.  This may have been the point of the book, to show people at their absolute worst and what the results of this can be, and that is valid.  I however do not need to read books about the everyday depravity of people...I can turn on the news for that.  I don't minds bad things happening, especially in a thriller.  I don't mind unlikable people, especially if they turn out to not be the bad guy (yay Snape!), but there needs to be some light somewhere in the story, some hope, some goodness, if for no other reason to contrast the bad.  I have read some dark and heavy books and really enjoyed them.  I have read some fantastic thrillers and mysteries that highlight the darkness of humans in a really great way, but they always had some factor that I cannot put into words, but that this book was missing.  Obviously I did not like this book, which frustrated me 'cause the author seems to have some real talent, I just really did not like the content. There is a movie based on this book coming out and I want to see it because I cannot imagine they left everything as is 'cause it would make for a very tough movie to get people to buy and watch for a second time.  I cannot in good conscious recommend this book to anybody, but you all decide for yourself.  I give this book 5 out of 10 faked deaths and that is only because the writing was to good to not give it some credit.
Do you notice ramblings on books I don't like tend to be really long? How did you feel about this book?  Does a book need to have hope, or is it ok to sometimes make a point using hopelessness?  How much do I love my wonderful Hubbin right now?

Tied In Knots

June is the month known for weddings and to celebrate that fact I thought I would introduce you to a nifty little collection called Tied In Knots edited by Lisa Taggart and Samantha Schoech.  I originally got this book back when I was getting married to remind me not to go all bridezilla :-)  This is a collection of true stories written by various people and I have to admit it is pretty funny.  Here are some of my favorites.

Alive and Well in Texas by Jennifer Carsen - This first story hits the ground running with a hilarious story about the ultimate bridezilla and her need to control every single aspect of her wedding.  This includes throwing her own lingerie party, bridal party, stock the brides kitchen party, and a zillion other materialistic shindigs.  This is the ultimate story of how not to be a bride.

The Do-It-Yourself Wedding in 314 Easy Steps by Sara Berkeley - I loved this one about how supposedly easy and simple a DIY wedding is supposed to be.  As a girl who did 99% of her wedding herself/with her mothers help and held it at her in-laws farm this really spoke to me.  I loved some of the mishaps, but the overall feeling of pride and ownership in her wedding.

The Sea Witch by Anne Johnson - Ha, this story made me laugh out loud more then any other story in this book.  The description of Mrs. D.  the polyester covered proprietor of a beach side resort and her insane antics were priceless.  I am kind of sad that the resort was sold and rebuilt because the story made me want to visit, just to see the rusted Lincoln Continentals if nothing else.

My Man in Black by Marisa Solis - Two young in love kids elope to Hawaii to escape the pressure of a big white wedding.  The bride however cannot quite shake the image of her man in a tux on their wedding day...even if nobody else will see it.  The ensuing search for a tux that actually fits and looks good on the little island is absolutely hilarious.

A First-Class Affair by Jennifer Li Shotz - If you've ever been to a wedding you know that good music is essential.  The decision between DJ or live band, classical or modern, just how evil is the chicken dance.  The couple in this story tell us of Barbra the woman who spent thousands of phone calls trying to convince them that a synthesizer was just as good as live brass.  In the end the couple gets what they want and the wedding is a success.

Most of the stories in here are pretty good, I have read through them a couple times and definitely recommend them to any bride who is feeling a bit frazzled.  Be warned that this book does contain a few adult scenes and a bit of adult language so maybe not give it to your 12 year old jr bridesmaid.  I give this collection 8 out of 10 beaded bridal veils.

How do you feel about personal stories?  Do you feel weddings are something to laugh at or a solemn affair?  What is your best wedding related story?

All Hail The God Of Absolutely Never Smiling No Not Ever

Hello to all my bookworm friends and welcome to another ramble for my messy little brain.  Today we shall explore all the things I loved (and a few things I didn't) about Midnight Blue-Light Special the second book in the InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire.  I grabbed this book last week (or was it the week before) because it was easy to carry and I spent the next four hours lying on the grass on the National Mall enjoying myself thoroughly.  First lets get through a quick synopsis as always SPOILERS AHEAD.

When we left Verity at the end of the last book she had just dismantled a snake cult and found what could be the last living male dragon, Hurrah!!!  She is now working at The Freakshow, a new nightclub owned by Kitty a bogeyman (bogeywoman?) and the niece of the former owner Dave of Fish and Strips.  Verity is the head choreographer and lead dancer for the burlesque type shows in this strange little club that mixes humans and cryptids.  What are cryptids? They are creatures of legend, think dragons, gorgons, bogeymen, bigfoot and so forth.  In between shifts at the Freakshow, Verity spends her time studying, protecting and on rare occasions slaying cryptids as part of her Price family work. This all gets complicated when her sometimes boyfriend Dominic DeLuca of the dreaded Covenant (a group working on exterminating all cryptids just

because) stops by to tell her that the Covenant is coming to New York City to do a purge of the cryptid population.  This of course gets Verity all hot and bothered and in need of reinforcements.  Her cuckoocousin Sarah (a human looking creature who naturally manipulates all living things in her environment), her adopted Uncle Mike, Ryan the super hot Tanuki, and his frills loving Waheela girlfriend Istas all move into an old warehouse in the meatpacking district to come up with a plan.  Dominic slips information to Verity so she can watch the arrival of the three Covenant agents who are coming to do the prep work for the purge.  Among the agents is one women named Margaret Healy, a cousin of Verity and hell bent on getting revenge on the Price/Healy family for leaving the Covenant and actually considering most cryptids to be non-evil.  Much jumping, running, fighting and Aeslin mice (you remember these religious fanatic rodents who provide some great comic relief from the last books right?) ceremonies, all leading up to Dominic finally deciding to leave the Covenant and join the Price family in their fight to protect the cryptids.  Unfortunately he decides this a tad to late as Verity has now been captured by the Covenant agents.  Sarah takes over the narrative for a while, which is really cool and gives us a new perspective on both events, and her own character.  She and the rest of the gang come up with a plan to try and save Verity and/or warn the rest of the cryptids who are hiding out at the Freakshow.  We switch back to Verity who is being tortured for information, but finally manages to attempt to escape.  The tension mounts and all the groups finally clash on the roof with Sarah using her mental powers to implant false memories in the Covenant agents saving everybody.  Verity wakes up in the hospital to learn that Dominic loves her and is staying on her side, the agents have been sent packing and the New York cryptids are as safe as ever.  Unfortunately the mind trick Sarah used on the agents also sent her into a telepathic coma...with the results yet to be seen.  The book ends with Verity and Dominic heading back to the Price family compound, Sarah going home with her mother and a promise of more to come.

Obviously there is a lot more to this book, but that is the bare bones of it (I say this in almost every rambling don't I?)  I loved the first book, and I love this book, it has all the fun stuff spunky, sassy heroines, kick-ass fighting, crazy cryptids, love, hate, family it is so so so much fun.  I still love Verity as a central character, she retained all the traits I loved about her the first time around so I won't rehash that bit, but I will say that her character showed some believable growth which I enjoyed.   One of my minor complaints in the last book is that we did not get to see a lot of Verity's dancing, which was supposed to be her passion, this was addressed beautifully in this book by Verity deciding that while dance was her heart, protecting the cryptids was her soul and she would focus on that.  The Dominic/Verity love story is awesome plain and simple.  Verity has no delusions that Dominic is wholly on one side or the other, she is fully aware that he can betray her at any moment (which I think is part of his appeal for her).  In the end Dominic has his own growth arc and comes to learn that he needs to pick a side.  I like that he chooses to leave the Covenant, not just because of Verity, but because he truly no longer believes that all cryptids are mindless evil creatures.  This time around we get to learn a lot about some of the other characters, especially Istas and Sarah.  Istas cracks me up and may be my favorite character in these books.  She is a solid, beautiful, violence loving cryptid who loves frills, lace, and carnage.  Her interactions with the other characters adds great dimension to this story.  Istas relationship to the Aeslin mice is my favorite as they are natural enemy as Istas eats

rodents.  They come to an understanding when they bond over a bbq of evil rat and all is good.  Sarah becomes a main character in this book and our understanding of this cuckoo creature becomes more complete.  Sarah is not a typical cuckoo and is constantly trying to balance her instinctive telepathic tenancies with her moral and ethic compass she was raised with.  There are a few minor things that drove me nuts.  Verity free-runs all over New York, which is great, but the author talks about it all the time, describes it, tells us Verity's feelings on it, like 57 times, I get it Verity likes to free-run, it makes her feel good, it makes me write run-on sentences, enough already!  I also wanted more cryptid information...but that is because I always want to know more.  There is a great little appendix in the back that gives some extra info, but if the author wanted to write a whole book version of it...I would totally buy it...wait, here, she has an online version  The author said that the next two books in the series are about Verity's older brother Alex, which is hopefully gonna be awesome as it feels like Verity's story is pretty complete.  Also if this is the trend I cannot wait to read about the youngest Price sister!  In case you didn't get it, I really enjoyed this book and already have the next one on my shelf.  I give it 8 out of 10 cryptid cabarets.
What kind of cryptid lives near you?  What kind of cryptid do you wish you could be?  How does one acquire a colony of Aeslin mice?

It's A Fine October Daye

One of my favorite joys in life is discovering a new author to love.  Recently (this past year) I have discovered Seanan McGuire (who also writes under the pen name Mira Grant).  Most of her work is in the urban fantasy round, straying into horror on occasion.  I like her work because she adds a plausibility element to all of this "make-believe" that a lot of fantasy and horror authors are missing.  For me this is a big deal because if I cannot at least try and believe the premise of the book, it takes me out of the world and makes for a much harder read (I'm looking at you Divergent).  I have read several of Ms. McGuire's books and decided to start on her October Daye series starting with the first one Rosemary and Rue.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

We start with a prologue in which we meet our heroine the changeling (half faerie, half human) private investigator October Daye.  We learn that October (or Toby as most people call her) has a fiance and young daughter at home. Toby is on a case to find the missing wife and daughter of her liege lord in the faerie realm the Duke Sylvester Torquill.  For her trouble Toby ends up being transformed into a koi by the bad guys and spends the next 14 years in a pond.  Flash forward 14 years and 6 months and Toby is trying to put her life back together.  She feels burned by her faerie side, doing her best to avoid all things fae and just focus on holding down a job long enough to pay rent.  Her fiance and daughter want nothing to do with her, having moved on in the 14 years of her absence.  This all changes when the Countess Evening Winterrose is murdered and lays a deadly curse on Toby, compelling her to find her killer or die trying. Toby starts her search by visiting the crime scene and "riding" the blood of Evening, a skill she inherited from her faerie mother.  By tasting the blood, Toby not only makes the binding of the curse stronger, but gets some clues on where to head next. She also finds out that Evening was killed by iron, a cruel and specific way to torture or kill someone with any faerie blood in them.  She starts by telling the Queen, who reacts in what can only be described as an insane way and is ordered to leave with no help.  Next Toby goes Home, a place run by a changeling named Devin who takes in wayward half-bloods and essentially owns them until they find a way to break free.  Toby spent some time there in her youth before being knighted by the Duke and has a

love/hate relationship with Devin. Devin agrees to help her for a future unnamed price and has two of his kids, the siblings Dare and Manuel act as body guards/escorts.  Toby follows the clues and finds a legendary hope chest hidden in Evenings things.  This hope chest supposedly holds wonders that are only spoke about in stories, one of them being the power to transform a changling into a full human or full faerie, just by holding the box, Toby can feel a strange power flowing through her.  Knowing how dangerous this box could be, she leaves it in the possession of Tybalt called King of Cats, the leader of the Cait Sidhe or cat faeries.  Toby knows it will be safe with him 'cause they really don't like each other and he will not want to be in her debt. Toby finally goes to see Sylvester and his court, finding a warm welcome by not only him, but his wife, who was returned to him along with their daughter 10 years after they vanished. Nobody knows what happened to them, Luna (the wife) won't say and Rayseline went a bit cuckoo and is now a bit of a sadistic freak.  More talking and blah blah blahing and we find out that Rayseline's Selkie husband Conner and Toby had a thing back in the day, making it a bit awkward.  Toby continues hunting around despite everybody telling her it is to dangerous, but the curse will kill her if she doesn't find the answer so off she goes.  She gets shot by iron multiple times, gets patched up by various people multiple times and finally figures out that the killer was Devin.  Devin killed Evening to try and procure the hope chest, made bitter by the fact that he feels he deserves the immortality of the fae and it wasn't given to him.  In the ensuing fight Dare is killed, as is the young lover of Julie another Cait Sidhe, causing all sorts of inter faerie court problems.  The curse is lifted and Toby is reinstated as a PI to continue her work as a faerie/human detective/knight.  Also she gets to keep this weird rose thorn cat goblin thingy.

A synopsis will never capture what I really love about this book and that is the complex, yet follow-able world building that is done, especially on the faerie side.  The author spends a lot of time making sure we know that faerie is not just a willowy little creature with wings and rose petal slippers, they come in all shapes and sizes and varieties and they are well represented here.  I love that not only are various types of faeries represented, but different cultures as well.  We have the Japanese Kitsune, the Undine which is a bit more of a Greek concept, Selkies from Irish/Scottish myth, the Persian Manticore, and of course all of your more typical Fair Folk type denizens.  All of this is further enhanced by the author clearly defining the various types of faeries and how the various mixes of blood produce different reactions and abilities.  For one example Toby's ability to "ride" blood comes from her Daoine Sidhe mother, while another character combines the sadisticness of the reclusive Peri (another Persian myth) and the socialness of  the Tuatha de Dannan (Gaelic myth) to make a being who not only enjoys people, but really enjoys inflicting pain on them.  The author has taken artistic liberties with the strictly old school myths, turning them into a world that is both completely new and familiar at the same time.  The hierarchy, politics, rules, traditions and class structure are fairly well explained and add a layer of authenticness and the feeling that these beings have been here for centuries.  The magic is well thought out and has rules and restrictions that feel authentic which again helps with the plausibility factor. I especially love that most magic users have a specific taste and smell that helps identify who the use is, for example Toby's magic manifests as copper and grass cuttings.  There were a couple things that did bug me.  I was not feeling the actual character of October Daye, especially compared to the main character Verity in her one of her other urban fantasy series (InCryptid).  Toby seems a lot more of a reactionary character, a bit of a blank slate for the other characters to act against.  She is a changeling who

has lots of friends (and enemies and frenemies) in convenient places. While I like the idea that she is not
super woman, that she can (and does) get truly injured in a very believable fashion (finally a recovery that takes more then 10 minutes, even with her super faerie healing powers) I feel she too often wanted to prove her self, got hurt, needed rescuing, then promptly went out and did the same thing with the same results several times over...for no real reason.  I understood the whole attraction/maybe love thing with Devin, but then the author tossed in some possible thing between Toby and Conner that felt...hmm...I'm not sure how to describe what bugged my about it.  I guess the fact that the vast majority of Toby's history is given to us in a few vague, moody, wisps, but we yet all of her motivations are based on her past.  I guess it is difficult to empathize or identify with Toby because we don't know why or how or what is really motivating her. So she tells us that her and Conner may at one time in the very distant past have possibly maybe been able to fall in love, but didn't and that is why she is now a zillion years later so attracted to him...even though...well we don't know because that is all we have to go on, some nebulous maybe feeling from her unknown past, we don't even get to know Conner enough to see his appeal.  In the end the world building trumps the story and most definitely outshines the main character.  Any time I want to read about one of the other characters instead of the main one, it throws up a bit of a red flag. Oh one other thing I liked was all of the subtle references to Shakespeare. Ophelia from Hamlet is mentioned in perfect context and Tybalt King of the Cats is such a wonderfully direct reference to my favorite character in Romeo and Juliet that I must admit I squealed out loud.  Overall I enjoyed the world Ms. McGuire has built and will probably be back to visit it again in her further books, but not until I have exhausted the InCryptid novels with my sassy spunky not so vague Verity.  I give this book 6 out of 10 rose goblins.
Do you like your cultural fairy tales all mixed up or do your prefer them separate and pure? Do you love it as much as I do when an author sneaks in some Shakespeare?  What does your magic smell like?  Do people give you funny looks when you squeal out loud when you read?