Review: Coexist by Julia Crane

I really wanted to like this YA paranormal romance.  The heroine is an elf that blends into human society, and the story looks like it has yummy romantic tension with less emo angst than the typical vampire YA PR.   But in the end, I couldn't suspend enough disbelief to enjoy it.  It may work better for younger teens.

Coexist, by Julia Crane, is the first book in a YA contemporary paranormal trilogy.  It's a story told mainly through the POV of sixteen-year-old Keegan, the light elf heroine, although the story does show scenes from her brother  Thaddeus, friends, and her Chosen (soul mate) Rourke.

The way Chosens work is that each elf has someone that's chosen for them when they're born (in a mysterious way that isn't explained), but they are not allowed to meet until they turn eighteen (it's also not explained who makes that rule).  Once they're both eighteen, the Chosen bond flares to life, and they instantly fall in love and can sense each other from far away et cetera.  At the beginning of the book, Keegan's learned Rourke's name, so every time she thinks about him, he feels it and can see of what she's doing.  Of course, being a teenage girl that knows she has a perfect soul mate out there somewhere, she thinks about him a lot, so he's constantly being distracted by her and desperately wants to meet her, but knows he should wait until she turns eighteen.

Review: Dragonswarm by Aaron Pogue

This engaging sequel to Taming Fire mostly lives up to the promise of its predecessor.  I recommend it for anyone who read the first book, and recommend the series in general for anyone who's looking for a good heroic high fantasy.

The Dragonswarm, by Aaron Pogue, is a straight-forward high fantasy adventure that's tightly focused on the protagonist.  The first book was a really good coming-of-age of a hero sort of book, and this one continued by not only upping the ante in terms of magic and impact on the world, but also having him continue to grow emotionally.

The premise is that Daven, the main character, gets some dragon blood in him through an accident that happens in the first book.  This gives him crazy powers that other humans don't have.  He's also street-wise and an accomplished swordfighter with an intellectual bent.  No small-minded anti-heroes here!  Unfortunately, he's wanted by a tyrannical king (where wanted = wants to kill him), hated by powerful wizards, in love with a beautiful girl, but is mostly concentrating on the imminent dragonswarm apocalypse.  A guy has to have his priorities, after all.

The Soul Linked Saga

If there were a literary equivalent of the walk of shame for book reading, then this review would be me doing it.  These books are the craziest wish-fulfillment excuse for a series I have ever read.  The premise for this science fiction romance series is farcical.  The writing is mediocre.  But somehow I couldn't keep myself from reading all three.  It's my crack!  Be warned.

OK, so, here goes.

The premise is that among the thousand worlds there is a mysterious race, called the Jasani, who are born as triplets (called male-sets) and that each male-set does everything together, including sex, because they share a soul.  The Jasani are also magic-wielding shape-shifters (the first book is about the dragon-ish triplets, the second is the wolf-ish, and the third is great cat-ish).

The Jasani home world is modeled after an old west theme except on a world of lavendar skies and blue grass.  It comes complete with a horse and cattle ranch owned by the first set of triplets, and a small local town for shopping when they need the change of scenery.  Oh, and the first heroes are also the ruling royalty of the Jasani.

The Hedgewitch Queen

I really enjoyed this romantic fantasy novel.  It's a palace intrigue with some adventuring around the countryside thrown in.   Be warned - the main plot arcs aren't resolved by the end of the book.

The Hedgewitch Queen, by Lilith Saintcrow, is set in a world that felt a bit like a magical three musketeers, but told from the point of view of an idealistic young royal who has to flee with her musketeers (or, in this case, the Queen's Guards) after a palace coup.  The guards, of course, are led by a loyal, hot, mysterious captain of the guards.

Towards the beginning of the book, I thought I knew where it was going. Saintcrow uses some pretty familiar cliches, such as a magical jewel that proclaims the rightful ruler, hedgewitchcraft being less prestigious than court sorcery, etc.  However, she ended up surprising me a bit towards the end.  She manages to put in enough moral complexity that I'm still not sure how certain things will - or should - be resolved in the next book.  Kudos if she manages to wrap things up with an HEA without resorting to a deus ex machina.

Burning Up

Summary: I liked it.  This anthology features four well-crafted stories of true love and hot sex in a fantasy, paranormal, or steam punk setting.  Although all the authors each have popular series, all of the stories stand alone and can be enjoyed by non-fans.  Woo hoo.

Burning Up totally works as an anthology.  Although the stories were pretty disparate in terms of setting, it felt like they hang together in terms of personality, if you will.

Whispers of Sin, by Nalini Singh, is the first story.  In it, a Chinatown resident is attacked by a thug trying to shake her parents down for protection money.  She's saved by a changeling (were-leopard) member of the pack that's trying to claim San Francisco as their territory.  It's true lust and protectiveness at first sight, and it evolves into something deeper as they continue to spend time together.  Their respective family and pack really enrich the story.  I've never read her popular Psy/Changeling series, but I've heard of it, so will probably look it up based on this story.

Farro and Sulfer

This fantasy duology was unexpectedly awesome!  Compelling, believable story and characters.  

Farro and Sulfer, by Arreana, took me off-guard.  Despite some enthusiastic reviews, this book did not look promising.  The cover art screams "self-published", and, for some reason, the first few pages just seemed overwrought to me.  But, since I was reading the first chapter free anyway, I kept on reading to the next few pages and ended up totally hooked.

So, the story starts from the POV of a girl who has been tortured (literally and brutally) for some time, but she soon finds herself in a new circumstance.  The first book is a bit of a palace intrigue, and the second book has a quest structure.

You soon find out that this is a fantasy with a clearly developed, but not cliched, setting.  It felt a little ancient-Egypt-meets-medieval-Europe to me, and the author does a good job of unfolding the world without a lot of info-dumps.

It was not a perfect book.  The dialog was reasonable, but not anything I'm going to quote or especially remember.  Sometimes it seemed like smart bad guys ignored potentially effective manipulation/deceit tactics in favor of torture-and-violence just to make the heroine especially martyred.  And I had to use some suspension of disbelief on the magic system.

But...but...despite its flaws, I had a fantastic time reading this story.

Warbreaker

Summary: Sanderson's Warbreaker manages to give a complex, epic feel to a fantasy story with a relatively modest scale.  He has a deft hand with plot twists and and character development and a wildly imaginative magic/religion system.  It's like he channeled the sweet love child of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire and Bujold's Curse of Chalion while high.  I recommend it for fantasy fans.  If you don't like epics then you might be turned off by the somewhat uneven and slower pace of the book's middle, but the last third of the book redeems it.  

Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson, is...uhm...interesting.  And good.

AND Sanderson has a free pdf download of Warbreaker available on his web site.  Score!

OK, so here's the basics.  Although a few characters start off in a nearby kingdom, the story is pretty much entirely set in the capital city of Hallandren.  There are three main POV characters and story arcs, Vivenna, Siri, and Lightsong.