Blood Drive

Blood Drive by Jeanne C. Stein is the second book in the Anna Strong Chronicles, and picks up two months after Anna's becoming a vampire.  She's still picking up the pieces of her life after that night and especially after the way things went down with Avery, she's determined to maintain as much as possible some semblance of her human life - something that is becoming increasingly more difficult all the time, in ways she hadn't predicted.

In Blood Drive, however, things get even more complicated when the last girlfriend of her late brother shows up after more than ten years, claiming to need her help.  Anna didn't like Carolyn when she was dating her brother, and she doesn't trust her now, but the help she needs is with her daughter, Trish - Anna's niece.  Anna isn't as easily persuaded as her parents that her brother is the girl's father, but she agrees to help find her.  When a friend of Trish's turns up dead, however, and Anna begins uncovering evidence of the things Trish has been involved in, her protective instincts start kicking into overdrive and leaves open some very difficult questions:  Who can she trust?  Will she be able to reign in her rage enough to contain her newly acquired thirst for blood,  or will she lose her grip on what's left of her humanity?

Craving

Craving by Kristina Meister, the first in her Apocalyptic series, is a sort of urban fantasy detective novel with a heavy philosophical bent.  Lilith Pierce flies from her home in California to make her estranged sister Eva's final arrangements after getting the call that Eva has committed suicide.  When she goes back to the station the next day to collect Eva's body, however, it turns out the last few days were a vision --- they never actually happened.  Eva once told Lilith that "everything means something," and with that in mind, she is convinced that there is more to her sister's death than meets the eye.  With the help of her sister's shelves of handwritten journals and a soon-to-be-retired police detective, Lilith begins to investigate Eva's life, and with every step, she finds herself becoming more and more directly involved in the mysterious underworld Eva left behind.

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Sorry for the crazy delay in getting this review up, everyone!  School and things have been keeping me occupied and blogging got a little shunted to the side for a while, but I am back!  This might be running a little more slowly for a while, but I hated being on my unexpected hiatus, and I hope to not be inactive for such a long time again.

Anyway, so I finished Craving quite a while ago, but sitting here and thinking about it to write this has brought the story and the character pretty easily to the front of my mind again.  The philosophy/spiritualism is a little on the heavy side for some, I think, so it would certainly not be everyone's cup of tea; it wasn't preachy exactly, but if you're looking for more of a "mindless" read to just kick back and get through, I don't think I'd recommend this one.

That being said, I rather enjoyed Craving, in part because it ended up being very different from what I'd expected.  Based on the sisters' names and on the title, I thought this would be a Judeo-Christian morals in disguise kind of thing - Eva and Lilith?  Yeah.  Not very subtle, or so I thought.  But most of the philosophy in the book centers around Buddhism, which is something I honestly don't know too much about, so if anything is inaccurate, I wouldn't know.  It all sounded very well-researched to me, so either way, it made for some fairly rich storytelling.  The vampire element was interesting and because of the nature of the rest of the plot, Meister has given the reader an "unconventional" take on that niche that might be at least a little more palatable to vampire "purists" than the sparkling variety presented by Meyers in the Twilight saga.

Dark Oracle

Dark Oracle, by Laura Bickle (writing as Alayna Williams), is an urban fantasy with a strong element of suspense, not too unlike her other series.  Tara Sheridan is an oracle with a gift for reading the Tarot.  Her mother had the same gift, and both were members of a secret society, Delphi's Daughters, who trace their "lineage" back to the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece.  Tara, however, who was initiated as a child, wants nothing to do with the Daughters.  Instead, she uses her talents secretly to work with the government as a criminal profiler.  One case she was working on went badly for Tara, and she has since been living as something of a hermit, hidden away in a cabin in the woods with no one but her cat for company.  

She gets pulled back into that life when an old friend of her mother's (who is also one of the Daughters) comes to ask Tara for her help in an investigation that is of great interest to them, for reasons she doesn't really go into.  Tara is reluctant, but ends up agreeing to help.  The Daughters have connections in some very high places, so she gets called in as a consultant to assist Agent Li in New Mexico, where a clean-up crew is already hard at work on the scene of an explosion at a government lab in the desert.  The man responsible, the physicist Dr Magnusson, is gone without a trace, but the agency and the military are both very interested in finding him.  So interested, in fact, that Magnusson's daughter, herself a graduate student in physics, is also now a target.  Tara and Agent Li soon find that if they want to protect themselves and Cassie Magnusson as well, they will need to put aside their differences and trust each other.  In doing so, Tara also finds that as reluctant as she was to take on this case, and as eager as she is to be done with it once more, it may not be as easy to walk away this time.

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After finishing both Embers and Sparks, I hunted for Dark Oracle every time I set foot in a bookstore.  And I actually really liked this one almost as much as I enjoyed those.  It doesn't necessarily have a huge urban fantasy feel to it - it seemed more like mystery/suspense to me, with a heavy mystical element.  But that is fine with me.  I fell in love with urban fantasy, yes, but before I came across this  genre, I was already a big fan of mystery and suspense.  Combine the two, and I am more than content with the outcome.

I love the idea of the Daughters of Delphi, and I won't lie, I kind of wish it were a real thing and that I were an initiate.  The members are all oracles, though their talents vary widely.  Tara and her mother work with Tarot divination, but the current Pythia (basically, the group's leader) is a pyromancer, and another member who features prominently in the story is a geomancer.  Though not quite like the geomancers you come across in World of Warcraft, which is kind of where my mind kept straying to when the practice was brought up.  Bickle's geomancy is more realistic, in that the character doesn't rain fire down upon anyone or things like that.  It involves the reading of ley lines and divination using crystals and runes...things like that.

Once again, I got the feeling that a lot of research went in to the writing of this book; the science behind the dark matter is very interesting, and seems sound.  I am no physicist, though, so don't hold me to that.  The important thing is that this is fiction, and it seems accurate enough to not cross the line into being science-fiction.  Actual physicists, feel free to disagree with me, because you obviously will know more about that part of it than I likely ever will.  But my disbelief, it is suspended.

Sparks

Sparks is the stunning sequel to Laura Bickle's Embers, an urban fantasy duology (which I hope will turn into a full-on series).  By day, Anya Kalinczyk is an arson investigator for the Detroit Fire Department; by night, she investigates the paranormal with the Detroit Area Ghost Researchers.  Anya is somewhat reluctant to associate herself with the DAGR, partly because she's unsure whether she would still have a job if word got out, but also because she struggles with her role in the group:  disposal.  If DAGR were the Ghostbusters, Anya would be their Proton Pack.

Anya is a Lantern - a kind of medium who has a special connection with the element of fire and control of sorts over its destructive powers.  As a medium, she can see and interact with ghosts, but as a Lantern, she also has the ability to destroy them by essentially sucking them into herself like some kind of heartburn-inducing ectoplasm smoothie.  It isn't something she enjoys doing.  You can imagine this Lantern business can get pretty dangerous, but that ain't nothin' but a thang when you've also got the companionship and protection of an elemental familiar; Sparky, Anya's salamander, has been with her ever since she can remember.  He might be mischievous like a puppy who enjoys making "short" (heh) work of various electrical devices, but he's also a fierce and loyal guardian.

In Sparks, the DFD is confronted with a series of puzzling cases of what appears to be spontaneous combustion.  What's especially troubling about these cases is that Anya can sense old magick at each of the scenes; she suspects they are linked to Hope Solomon, who heads a shady organization in the city called "Miracles for the Masses."  Trying to get enough evidence that isn't paranormal in nature could be a problem, however, and the body count is rising.

Moonburn

Moonburn by Alisa Sheckley is the sequel to The Better To Hold You; Abra's gotten pretty used to her new lycanthropic lifestyle by now, and is sort-of-happily living with Red, the shapeshifting ginger redneck.  Still living in the house nearby are her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Hunter, and Magda - the Romanian researcher of Unwolves he left her for, who, incidentally, is also the one responsible for Hunter (and so, in turn, Abra) with the lycanthropy virus.  Abra doesn't really seem to mind being a werewolf so much, though, and enjoys working at a small veterinary practice with her former instructor, Malachy.

There are obvious downsides to being a werewolf, though; normally, Abra is just sensitive to the phases of the moon, which she keeps careful track of.  Lately, though, she has been finding it more difficult to control the change, which seems to be trying to happen well before the moon is even full.  That isn't the extent of the strangeness, though - everyone seems to know things about her condition that she isn't aware of, and Red appears to be deliberately keeping information from her.  This is not at all helpful, because she is currently finding it extremely difficult to retain some sense of control over her purely animal instincts, and has become an object of lust for every man and dog that crosses her path, which doesn't exactly help with the strain in her relationship with Red.

What's more, this turns out to be a very inopportune time for these kinds of problems in her personal life.  The small, backwoods town she lives in, Northside, is a sort of paranormal hub where the veil between the physical and the liminal worlds is particularly thin.  A new housing development is being constructed at the mountain, right in the ancient roaming grounds of the manitou - powerful spirits that were recognized by the American Indians who were native to the area, but were forgotten for the most part, over time.  Well, now they are awake and kind of pissed.  Kind of REALLY pissed.  One in particular, taking the forms of a bear/Québécois lumberjack, has come to town to fuck up everybody's day.

First off, I rather enjoyed The Better To Hold You, and likewise, I also enjoyed Moonburn.  I think I enjoyed the former just a little bit better overall, though, if I had to pick one over the other.  Don't get me wrong, this one is certainly not lacking for action of any kind, but it was sometimes almost a little too much.  But I also have a tendency to gag myself and roll my eyes at any tale of The Beautiful Girl Who Doesn't Realize That She's Beautiful Even When Every Boy Wants Her And Is Embarrassingly Obvious About It.  I do like Abra, though. She's not typical as far as heroines of urban fantasy novels go - she doesn't really kick that much ass, and more often than not, she has a tendency to want to shy away.  That makes her feel more like a real person to me, since let's face it - not everyone is some leather-clad, ass-kicking dynamo who seems to live for the moments when danger dares to present itself to her.  Some of us will do what we have to, but would really rather be home in our pajamas doing a whole lot of nothing.  The latter is more Abra's style.  She is a pretty simple lady (you know, apart from the whole werewolf thing) and I can relate to that.

Embers

Embers by Laura Bickle is the first in her series about Anya Kalinczyk, an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department.  But fighting fires and catching up to the people who start them?  That's only her day job...Anya is also a Lantern - a kind of medium who has power over the element of fire, and can not only see and speak to earthbound spirits, but can also devour them.  Nights are spent helping during exorcisms with a local ghost hunting group.  Anya has managed to keep both these aspects of her life separate, but this becomes impossible when she realizes that clues left at the scene of each fire set by a serial arsonist seem to be connected to an occult ritual of some kind.  She was ready to walk away for good from the Detroit Area Ghost Researchers - and the group's handsome technophile, Brian - but now she needs their help to put the pieces together and stop the arsonist before all of Detroit ends up burnt to the ground - or worse.

The Becoming

The Becoming by Jeanne C. Stein is the first book in the Anna Strong Chronicles. Anna is a young woman who, to the dismay of her parents, has quit her teaching job and begun an exciting career as a bounty hunter. She and her partner, David (a former professional football player), are about to bring in their latest bounty when it all goes horribly wrong - the man gets the better of David (a stunning first) and then attacks Anna. Waking up in the hospital a couple of days later, she has no idea yet that her life has changed irrevocably. Her doctor, Avery, senses the changes, though and takes her under his wing - he's a vampire too, after all, but much older and more experienced. Good thing, too, since not long after her release from the hospital, it seems the tables have turned and she's the one now being pursued by someone or something. The things she holds dearest in her life are being threatened, and Anna must learn quickly what she is now capable of, if she's going to stop whoever it is.