link to excerpt added… I know you are going ‘huh a paranormal’… when I have been doing nothing but bitching about there being too many paranormals in the reading world lately.  Look at that cover, isn’t it fab and it sounds amazing, a mix of middle ages, romance, historical intrigue, paranormal…part of me wants to stop what I am doing and read it now

In this captivating reinvention of the werewolf novel, S. A. Swann propels readers into the darkest days of the Middle Ages, weaving a rare blend of soaring romance, historical intrigue, paranormal thrills, and spiritual questioning to tell a story that forever changes those who hear it.

When a monk inadvertently discovers a lair of werewolf young, he unleashes what will become the Church’s most powerful–and secret–weapon. Clandestinely raised by the Teutonic Order, these lupine creatures serve as instruments of God against pagan unbelievers. Trained to slip into villages cloaked in human form, they are all but unstoppable. Only one, called Lilly, has cunningly fled her brutal master.

Uldolf is too young to remember the massacre eight years earlier that claimed his village, his arm, and his kin. But he knows the pain of loneliness. When he sees what appears to be a beautiful young woman, injured and cowering in the woods, he races to her aid. Uldolf and his adoptive family will do anything to protect the terrified girl, but the danger is greater than they can possibly imagine. For death is the only life Lilly has ever known–and if their humanity can’t pierce the darkness Lilly harbors in her soul, they’ll soon come to know it, too.

wonder if he pulls it off…

you can read an excerpt here… uh dunno where cuz I can’t find one here or here the authors site is either really useless or my computer didn’t load it all the way (verra possible). You need more than cover quotes and your blurb but that is a good start and better than nothing. Book releases August 25, 2009…

Liviania’s review of Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastards, Book 2) by Scott Lynch
Fantasy released by Bantam Spectra 29 July 08

I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamora on a whim, shortly before I left for college last year. It had an alliterative title, shiny pink cover, and the back promised thieves. (Note: No wonder my book shopping habits are bad for my wallet. That’s not strenuous criteria.) The story within was fast-paced, intelligent, and funny, so I eagerly picked up the sequel once it was available in paperback. I only decided to write a review once I saw Shannon C. had reviewed the first.

Locke makes a fabulous main character. He’s got a smart mouth, arrogance, audacity, and a brain that allows him to somehow survive. He’s also got Jean Tannen, a fellow thief and fierce fighter to guard his back. Both were members of the Gentlemen Bastards in Camorr, but now they’re in Tal Verrar and planning a heist at Requin’s Sinspire (think mob-controlled Vegas, in medieval times – yes, it is that awesome.) Unfortunately, one of Requin’s political rivals, the Archon, the military leader, interferes. He wants Locke and Jean to help gain the upper hand on the Priori (like the Senate) by causing a war.  This is where the pirates come in.

This book contains the same wit as the first, though you might not want to repeat some of the lines that are making you laugh to curious onlookers.  Lynch is rather fond of “fuck” and the forms thereof.  On the other hand, Red Seas Under Red Skies showcases Locke and Jean in a very different situation from The Lies of Locke Lamora.  This time they aren’t two steps ahead of all the other plotters; in fact, they’re often two steps behind.  They’re coming up with solutions on the fly to keep their lives and make the score.  I enjoyed getting to see this side of the characters.

There’s also a touch of romance in this one.  I don’t want to say too much about her, but Jean enters a relationship about halfway (or two-thirds of the way) through the book.  The characters have great chemistry and it’s balanced well with Jean’s relationship with Locke. There’s also some great humor with the poor unfortunates who have to room next to the lovebirds.  In other news on the romance front, the end promises that Sabetha will finally appear in the third book.  We’ve been tantalized with hints about Locke’s former comrade and only love for two books, so I cannot wait to see her.

Of course, that’s not my only reason to say I’ll return for the third book.  So far the Gentlemen Bastards is a fast-paced, well-plotted, humorous fantasy.  The books have contained satisfying capers within and intriguing overarching plots involving the Bondsmagi and Sabetha.  The only downside is I have to wait for the third.  How it’s going to top the awesome pirate crew, I don’t know.

Grade: A-

Read more reviews of the Gentlemen Bastards series by following its tag.

Summary:

Locke Lamora, the erstwhile Thorn of Camorr, and Jean Tannen have fled their home city and the wreckage of their lives. But they can’t run forever, and after escaping Camorr they decide to head for the richest and most difficult target on the horizon– the city-state of Tal Verrar. And the Sinspire.

The Sinspire is the ultimate gambling house . . . exclusive, luxurious, and fiendishly guarded. No thief has ever survived an attempt to rob it. Naturally, Locke plans to take it for a fortune, in his biggest gamble yet.

But this perfect crime may have to wait.

Someone else in Tal Verrar wants the Gentlemen Bastards’ expertise, and they’re not gentle in compelling Locke and Jean to devote their talents to an even more unlikely and suicidal proposition– masquerading as pirates on the high seas. Fine work for a pair of landlubbing thieves barely able to tell one end of a ship from the other!

Locke and Jean find their abiding friendship tested to its very limits in this strange new world of lurching wooden decks, brutal ship-to-ship action, and feuding pirate captains. But not even their sojourn as buccaneers can keep the Gentlemen Bastards from their much-desired reckoning with all the powers that have conspired to interrupt their lives, including the last people in the world any sane person would want to offend… the Bondsmagi of Karthain.

Read an excerpt (click on the widget and keep paging down – you eventually make it to the excerpt).

Shannon C.’s review of The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen Bastards, Book 1) by Scott Lynch
Fantasy fiction released by Spectra 26 Jun 07

I’ve been in a fantasy mood lately, and so have unearthed a few fantasy books from my ginormous TBR to assuage this mood. One of these was Scott Lynch’s debut, The Lies of Locke Lamora. This was a pleasant surprise, and well worth all the hype it generated when it was first published. The book’s charming titular character, the author’s snarky sense of humor, and the dark setting combined into a book I didn’t want to put down.

Locke Lamora is a thief. Not just any thief, but a member (and leader) of the notorious Gentlemen Bastards, thieves who consider it their duty to break the Secret Peace between the crime lords of the city of Camorr and the nobility. We meet Locke as he begins a con of the Don and Dona Salvara, two members of the nobility. But other things are afoot as a man known only as the Grey King attempts to depose the Cappa of Camorr, bringing a reluctant Locke and his equally reluctant friends into his plans, which could have disastrous consequences. We also get interludes describing Locke’s early life and training, which provide tantalizing hints about the fact that there’s obviously more to reveal in Locke’s backstory.

So, as I said, Locke made this book for me. He is definitely a rogue, and despite the fact that I’m not sure I’d want to be alone in a dark alley with him, I adored him. He’s charming, mischievous, and doesn’t spend too much time angsting, and he is saved from becoming a total moral reprobate by the fact that it’s obvious there are things he won’t do and people he won’t screw over. He made being a Gentleman Bastard seem kind of glamorous there for a while, and I was cheering him on .

The other characters are also well-drawn. I particularly liked Locke’s friend Jean, who complements Locke perfectly, and who I can’t help wanting to ship with Locke. (But then, I also kind of ship Sam/Frodo, too, so you might want to take that with a grain of salt.) Besides Jean, the rest of the Gentlemen Bastards are fun, if a bit one-note, with the exception of Father Chains, Locke’s mentor, and Sabetha, the only female member of their gang, who we do not meet in this novel.

The plot is riveting, and the tension ratchets up to a brilliant and satisfying climax. As with all good dark fantasy, not everybody survives, but at least this book actually has a complete ending that ties up most of the loose ends while leaving enough questions to be answered that I want to see where else Mr. Lynch takes the story.

If I have any quibbles, it’s that I would have liked for a bit more from the secondary characters, and I did think Locke and Jean weren’t as proactive as they could have been, but I also think some of that will change as the series progresses.

If you like dark, snarky fantasy, and you don’t mind a bit of a doorstopper, this is certainly a book to try.

Grade: A-

Summary:

“Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry ‘Content’ to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.”
–William Shakespeare, Richard II, iii, ii

The Thorn of Camorr is said to be an unbeatable swordsman, a master thief, a ghost that walks through walls. Half the city believes him to be a legendary champion of the poor. The other half believe him to be a foolish myth. Nobody has it quite right.

Slightly built, unlucky in love, and barely competent with a sword, Locke Lamora is, much to his annoyance, the fabled Thorn. He certainly didn’t invite the rumors that swirl around his exploits, which are actually confidence games of the most intricate sort. And while Locke does indeed steal from the rich (who else, pray tell, would be worth stealing from?), the poor never see a penny of it. All of Locke’s gains are strictly for himself and his tight-knit band of thieves, the Gentlemen Bastards.

Locke and company are con artists in an age where con artistry, as we understand it, is a new and unknown style of crime. The less attention anyone pays to them, the better! But a deadly mystery has begun to haunt the ancient city of Camorr, and a clandestine war is threatening to tear the city’s underworld, the only home the Gentlemen Bastards have ever known, to bloody shreds. Caught up in a murderous game, Locke and his friends will find both their loyalty and their ingenuity tested to the breaking point as they struggle to stay alive…

Download the prologue excerpt and mapshere and read an excerpt of the first chapter here.

Shannon C.’s review of Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
Science fiction novel released from Spectra 1 Jul 90

There are some books you can breeze through in a matter of hours, close the book afterwards with a satisfied smile and reach for the next. Then there are the books that practically demand to be savored, with the reader moving along at whatever leisurely pace the author sets. As someone with a huge stack of books on my To Be Reviewed list, I don’t often take time to read the books that need savoring. However, as soon as I started reading Grass which was originally published in 1989, I knew I’d stumbled upon a treat, and I further knew I couldn’t just rush through it or I’d miss stuff.

Plague has spread throughout the galaxy that humans have settled, decimating the population as it goes along. The only place where it seems to be immune is the planet Grass, which is, unsurprisingly, entirely covered in various multi-colored types of grass. The officials of Sanctity, the galaxy’s huge major religion, want to know what’s so special about Grass, so they send Rodrigo Yraear and his family to Grass to discover whether the plague has spread there and what can be done about it. Rodrigo’s family is chosen because he and his wife, Marjorie, Lady Westriding, are both accomplished equestrians and they figure that will help them make friends with the somewhat insular Grassians. However, what they find on Grass is so much more than mere plague. The more she is on grass, the more Marjorie Westriding is intrigued, and the more enmeshed she becomes in something that could either save or destroy mankind.

This isn’t a very good synopsis. I haven’t even mentioned the other threads, like the story of Rillibee Chime, an acolyte of Sanctity who came to Grass against his will and gains some prominence because he is an adept climber. There’s also the story of the aristocratic Grassians known as the Bons, who engage in ritual fox hunts that are much, much more sinister than the ones back on Earth, or the Foxen, a truly bizarre alien race concerned with metaphysical matters. Of course, if I started explaining all the plot complexities, that would lead to spoilers, and this book shouldn’t be spoiled.

What really drew me to this book was the writing style. It is lush and evocative, and I got a sense of how grass could be majestic as well as frightening. The prose is also rife with literary allusions–I caught references to Moby Dick and Walt Whitman, and I’m sure there are others–and yet, for the most part, it is readable. The characters are well-drawn. Marjorie, the protagonist, is a complex woman struggling with questions of faith and duty and what her place is in the universe. She is an older woman, and somewhat introspective, and though she does get to star in some riveting action scenes, she isn’t really the kick-ass type. Nonetheless, she is sensible and charismatic, and Tepper portrays this well without Marjorie coming across as a Mary Sue. I also had to admire Marjorie for putting up with her husband, Rigo, who, far from being made a villain of the peace, is simply stubborn, passionate, and utterly misguided about what’s going on around him.

Other characters are equally well-drawn. Rillibee Chime, the reluctant Sanctity acolyte, was a particular favorite, and I equally loved his mentor, the old and wise Brother Mainoa, who gets some of the funniest lines in the book. Even the human villains are drawn with enough detail that it’s possible to feel sympathy for them even when it’s clear they’re in the wrong. And Tepper manages to make the aliens on this world–from the gentle, contemplative Foxen to the fierce, malicious Hippae–unique and, actually, alien.

The plot meanders, as I said, for the first half. However, around the second half of the book, everything picks up speed. This isn’t to say the first half was boring, because it wasn’t and I actually liked it better. By the second half of the book, though, Tepper starts to play around with some of her ideas about faith and sin and salvation, and there were a few moments when she almost lost me. And then there was the romance that develops, which left me with a lot of questions I couldn’t answer on face value. However, the book winds up with a fantastic climax and a very satisfying ending that leaves Marjorie open for new adventures and new possibilities.

Sheri Tepper is one of the major feminist science fiction writers, and as such I’ve been meaning to try one of her books for a while. I’m glad I finally did, and I highly recommend this book, especially to those people who like something a little more literate in their science fiction.

Grade: A-

Summary:

Here is a novel as original as the breathtaking, unspoiled world for which it is named, a place where all appears to be in idyllic balance.

Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. Over time, they evolved a new and intricate society. But before humanity arrived another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It, too, had developed a culture…

Now, a deadly plague is spreading across the stars. No world save Grass has been left untouched. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier has been sent from Earth to discover the secret of the planet’s immunity. Amid the alien social structure and strange life-forms of Grass, Lady Westriding unravels the planet’s mysteries to find a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself.

No excerpt could be found.