Tag: m/m supernatural romance

Review: Nights In Canaan by Kendall McKenna

Rating: 5 stars

Nights in Canaan coverEternal redemption, eternal damnation. Two warriors, one good and one evil caught in an timeless loop, forever being reborn, fated to love and then die to keep the balance of the universe intact.  Each time, the ancient vampire pleads with his warrior of light love to let the vampire turn him so they can be together forever and each time the warrior hesitates longer before making the killing blow.  Is this the reincarnation where the warrior for good finally gives in to his hearts desire or will the pattern continue as love is sacrificed for the greater good?

Kendall McKenna continues to astonish me with her powerful stories.  Her writing is precise, compelling, and memorable.  Nights in Canaan is just another terrific example of her ability as an author to bring her vision to life, no matter the genre.

I will say that this story is not for everyone.  If you are someone that needs a HEA or a HFN, Nights in Canaan will not meet either requirement.  But if a haunting story of eternal love is one that you seek, than this is a story for you.

Nights in Canaan opens in the City of Gina, Egyptian ruled Land of Canaan, 3rd Year of Pharaoh Akhenaton (1350 bce).  Both the ancient vampire and his other half, the winged warrior have risen to do battle with each other again.  The warrior for good is fated to kill his lover, the vampire but not before they are given a short time in which to love each other, indulging in blood drinking and sex.  Then memory and duty take over and events repeat themselves.  As time moves forward we watch this happen until we reach the year 2004, City of Fallujah, Iraq. We meet Marine Sgt. Jayden Lindberg on patrol with other members of his unit.  It’s nighttime and Jayden watches in disbelief as one of his men is attacked by a vampire and drained before his eyes.  Somehow he knows that his weaponry is worthless against this enemy, and Jayden does nothing as his man dies.  McKenna’s Marine characters are wonders of realism, and Jayden’s confusion and inner turmoil is shattering.  He cannot understand his behavior in face of his soldier’s death and the easy manner in which he lied about his role.  McKenna captures the dangers inherent of a patrol in Iraq and then ups the terror as the men face not just insurgents but a vampire intent on building his own army.

As the events move towards the inevitable conclusion, memories starts to resurface, and we watch as the viewpoint changes slowly from that of a human to that of an immortal.  Just masterful, using a change in word choice here and there to denote someone removing themselves from a intimate connection that used to be the norm to an elevated dispassionate stance.

At one point in the story, the warrior’s memory awakes and he wonders of his ancient vampire lover:

” Did he experience excruciating pain when his fangs first lengthened and his body began to crave human blood?”

And I wonder as well, wishing for the vampire’s pov as much as the warrior’s.  Both characters are weary of their continued battle, full of pain at the inevitability of their roles and yet their love is as potent as ever.  The story ends as it should, the only way it can.   At 65 pages, it is short in length but will stay long in your memory.

Cover Art by Deana Jamroz is nice but not nearly as good as the story within.

March Came Roaring In Like a Lion and the Week Ahead in Reviews

Remember last March in Maryland?  The sun was shining over plants newly emerged from the ground,  our temperatures hovered in the high 70’s after experiencing absolutely no winter at all.  Birds were nesting, the butterflies were flying, and thoughts of picnics and outdoor barbecue dinners molded our grocery lists.  Even now I can bask in the memories….

Now switch to present day and the snow flurries I saw swirling around in clear defiance that it was March.  It was cold and dark clouds made sure the sun never made an appearance.  I stopped to look at the pansies with their smiling faces at Good Earth and thought “not in a million years am I hanging around outside to plant you so bugger off”,  channeling some Brits I know.  Those of you in the middle of huge snowstorms or still in recovery from the same are probably wanting to smack me over such piddling weather.  Me too.  I do realize it could be so much worse but this dang climate change has upped our expectations for March beyond all reasonability, hence the whining.

On the other hand, it does give me time to spend with plant catalogs, and go to a whine oops wine and cooking demonstration like I did  yesterday.  Had the weather been gorgeous, I would have been outside and missed a Mahi Mahi cooked in a buirre blanc sauce to die for, a lovely Coq au vin and a porc du rose, just a lovely 3 hours spent with nice people, great wines and food and a very funny Chef Read.  So highs and lows, cold and hot, one friend moves away and I get the chance to meet others. Life, the weather and changing climate keeps springing changes upon us whether (ha!) we are ready or not, usually mostly not.   Hmmmm,..rambling here again.

So where were we? Ah yes, the week ahead.  Hopefully that will see the Caps win, the Nats all heathly and happy in Florida, honestly don’t care what’s going on with the “Skins, and new recipes to try out.  I will be finishing up the Cambridge Fellows Mysteries series this week and it will be sad to say goodbye to Jonty and Orlando.  Look for a post full of Q & A with Charlie Cochrane to post the day following.  She was wonderful in answering all the questions that kept popping into my brain as I finished All Lessons Learned.  We have a mixed bag of new and familiar authors here, something for everyone I believe.  So here is the way it is scheduled so far:

Monday, March 4:                     Spot Me by Andrew Grey

Tuesday, March 5:                     Wake Me Up Inside by Cardeno C

Wed., March 6:                           Velocity by Amelia C. Gormley

Thursday, March 7:                    Lessons for Survivors by Charlie Cochrane

Friday, March 8:                         A Cambridge Fellows Q & A with Charlie Cochrane

Saturday, March 9:                     His Best Man by Treva Harte

So there it is, a really good week ahead.  Now if just those blasted snow clouds would go away I might just think about planting some pansies….

Review: The Family: Liam by K. V. Taylor

Rating: 5 stars

The Family Liam coverLiam Corchoran is not in a good place.  He is depressed and lonely, and older than most of the kids attending college for the first time.  A farm boy used to chores, family and friends, he is unprepared for the lifestyle around him and it doesn’t help that his college roommate is mostly absent, appearing occasionally in their shared room, only to disappear again shortly thereafter.  Liam falls easily into a circle of sex, alcohol, classes, drugs and depression, wondering why he feels so empty inside.

Gianni Fiorenza is Liam’s roommate.  He is also a century old vampire and a predator of the highest order.  The latest victim in his sights?  That would be Liam Corchoran, his roommate.  Something about that human intrigues Gianni which also pisses him off, so of course Liam has to pay. Soon, however, the game starts to turn into something more resembling friendship as Liam opens up to Gianni about literature, family and those things important to him.  But Gianni is a monster and he doesn’t do friendship, so even as things start to deepen even further, Gianni changes things permanently for Liam in a way that will reverberate through time.

These are not your sparkly, PG 13 vampires.  With Liam, the first book in The Family series by K. V. Taylor, we return to the vampires of true monster status, but with an updated twist.  I always have such high expectations of Taylor when it comes to her characterizations and here she exceeds them. And she has also done the same with her settings. This is not a universe of Rainbow Bright and Unicorns, but a much darker, malevolent place in which humans walk at their peril. I love how even a visit to a night club can turn from a simple night out into one of pain and horror in the hands of this talented author.

The characters of Liam and Gianni are wonderful dark creations, capable of quoting obscure literary passages, listening to everything from Verdi to rock, while expressing and feeling a range of emotions that sometimes has little to do with being human.  Gianni especially has that authentic feel of someone so removed from the human condition, elevated to true monster status that it is hard to connect with him as a character to begin with.  Instead, all feelings that Gianni will engender in the reader comes slowly, as he reveals more of himself to Liam over time, and the person he is  comes out in force, not just the predator but the man he once was.  Liam too is recognizably real and human.  Full of aspirations, binging on sex and alcohol to fill in those empty spaces within himself, we can understand him and the bleak place he is in. A place that Gianni manipulates beautifully for his own pleasure and hidden agenda. If this is a love story, it is not the one you are probably expecting.  It is a love story  certainly, but it’s participants are monsters and it follows that it’s their definition of love, not a human one.  That might be harder for some to accept.

Instead of humans being regarded as “love” interests or wonderful creatures, they are once more relegated to the status of food, so we understand immediately there must be something unusual about Liam to garner such interest from Gianni, the suave, arrogant vampire on the prowl.  But, like an onion, this story has so many layers, and they have to be peeled back before each new revelation can surface, bringing many tears to accompany a certain sweetness buried here as well.  There are some amazing side characters too that still stick with you, like Aldo and Madison and James, Liam’s brother.   But it is the haunting nature of human versus vampire and the question of what it is to really live and love that is addressed here, and it is done so in a manny you won’t soon forget.

Liam is only the beginning.  The rest of the series is listed in the order the author intends to write and release them.  I can’t wait to see what comes next in this remarkable series.   K.V. Taylor has created a website just for this series.  You can find it here. Follow my links and pick this right up from Belfire Press and Smashwords.   If you order by Feb. 21 (tomorrow) use this code for 20 percent off at Amazon and Smashwords (use code KC42D for 20% off through Feb 21). Kobo, Apple, Sony, B&N, and Diesel will be available in a few weeks.

The Family Series:

1. Liam (sort of romancey) released Valentine’s Day 2013
2. James (sort of action/adventurey)
3. Madison (sort of self-discovery)
4. Aldo (decidedly dark fantasy/horror)
5. Gianni

The Family: Liam by K. V. Taylor

Published by Bellfire Press, 260 pages

Cover Art & Design © 2013 Courtney Bernard http://www.cbernieillo.com/

Family Crest Art © 2013 Tricia Lewis

As with all her novels, here is the soundtrack to go along with the story:

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “American X”
Rolling Stones – “Bitch”
Oasis – “Hello”
Arctic Monkeys – “Dance Little Liar”
Muse – “Hysteria”
Stereophonics – “I’m Alright (You Gotta Go There to Come Back”)
Pulp – “Common People”
Avett Brothers – “Ill With Want”
The Radio Dept. – “Keen on Boys”
The Verve – “Lucky Man”
Franz Ferdinand – “I’m Your Villain”
The Perishers – “Nothing Like You and I”
Flogging Molly – “Selfish Man”
James Taylor – “Sweet Baby James”
Kaiser Chiefs – “What Did I Ever Give You?”

And of course…

Ludwig van Beethoven – Sonata No 8 in C minor op 13 ‘Pathetique’
Franz Liszt – Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Lento a capricccio

Bayou Loup (Rougaroux Social Club #3) by Lynn Lorenz

Rating 4.25 stars

Bayou LoupWhen werewolf Bobby Cotteau’s wife died, two things happened.  One was that Bobby could finally start to live his life as he had always wanted to before his inner wolf chose Carol as his mate, live and love as a gay man.  The second thing that started to happen?  Bobby started to die.   Without his mate, a werewolf will slowly waste away, and the only thing that can stop it if the shifter finds another mate, a rare occurrence. But before Bobby dies, he wants to experience the life he always wanted for himself.  Not comfortable being out in St. Jerome parish where he used to be the Sheriff, Bobby heads out to neighboring towns to visit gay clubs and meet strangers for anonymous sex.

During one of his weekend stays at a Lake Charles hotel, Bobby meets Mark, a handsome man closer to Bobby’s fifty years of age and the sparks fly.  A weekend of wild sex leaves both men satiated, physically and emotionally, something that surprises them both.  Bobby leaves to return home and neither man has each others phone number or last name to their mutual regret.

Professor Mark Bradford teaches zoology at the local college, his specialty is wolves.  Due to traumatic incident from his past, Mark has made it his life mission to prove the existence of wolves in the Louisiana bayou and now he thinks he has found the location of the wolves in a place called St. Jerome.  The small parish even had a Rougaroux Social Club which put on a yearly Rugarou Festival about their swamp wolf.  Now he is off with camera and recorder in hand to get the final bit of proof he needs to make his colleagues believe in him.  Once he has done this, perhaps he can finally start his life fresh, maybe even with the man he has meet in Lake George.

Bobby has the responsibility of running their Rugarou Festival this year but all he wants to do is  find Mark. Bobby has finally realized what his emotions have been telling him, that Mark is his true mate but he doesn’t know where to find him.  Then there is a Jesus sighting in the bark of the old tree in the church parking lot, a band cancels and he has to find a replacement while hiding from the widow determined to  get Bobby to marry her.  Things are falling apart faster than Bobby can fix them, but he has no idea that the worst is yet to come.  His true mate coming to town to expose his pack.  It will take all of his years experience, all of his wiles and major mojo if Bobby can save Mark, himself, his pack and the festival.

What a wild and wonderful sexy romp this book turned out to be.  I fell in love with this series with the first book, Bayou Dreams which introduced us to St. Jerome, Sheriff Scott Dupree, his mate Ted and all the other colorful characters of the parish.  Scott was the first shifter in his conservative, Catholic pack to come out  as gay and bring in his human mate as a pack member.  Scott did it with the backing of  Bobby Cotteau, a man who is not only his mentor but has acted as his father figure since the death of his dad.  Bobby, even as a secondary character, still managed to grab my attention.  Then in the second book, Bayou ‘s End (Billy and Peter’s story), it comes out that Bobby is gay but he buried that fact about himself when he married Carol all those years ago.  That was a truly heartbreaking  and unexpected element of that book and it further endeared the character of Bobby Cotteau to all the readers.

Now Lynn Lorenz uses all her wonderful gifts of characterization and vivid portraits of the Louisiana towns and countryside to bring Bobby’s story to life in Technicolor  (google it) terms and lusty joy.  The first part of the story is consumed with bobby and Mark’s first encounter in Lake Charles. And while it might seem one continuous sexual encounter (love that shifter stamina), it really shows the slow turn around in the attitude and thoughts of both men as the weekend progresses.  As physical satisfaction evolves to an emotionally happy state of mind, Bobby and Mark start to realize that this weekend is becoming more than just a quick sexual fix and the sex changes to reflect that.  And while Bobby realizes that Mark is his true mate there is not a case of instant love going on here, just a meshing of individuals.

And as with the previous books, there are quite a few humorous elements here to offset the angst, mostly supplied by that wonderful character of Darlene Dupree, Scott’s mother and her black cat, which just might be her familiar.  She has her own peculiar way of looking at religion that Father Peder, the parish priest would not approve of or even her son, the object of several of her spells gone awry.  She cracks me up every time and as she is such a lively, fleshed out riot of a person, you can’t wait to see what escapade she will cause next.

But Bobby and Mark, especially Bobby are the reasons to read this book.  Bobby is such a wonderful character, older and  yet more vulnerable than he should be at his age, finally able to be himself for the first time in his life and yet looking at such a small time in which to experience everything he has denied himself unless a miracle happens and then it does.  I loved him.  I love St. Jerome and can’t wait to see who and what will come up next in this small bayou town.  Mama Dupree is making noise about grandchildren that should leave the reader laughing in anticipation and her son and mate quaking in their boots.  Either way, you know it will be memorable and that is why this series continues to be a must read for me. I think it will be yours too.

But start at the beginning and catch up with all the parish going ons and relationships.  Here are the books in the order they were written and need to be read to understand the characters and their relationships:

Bayou Dreams (Rougaroux Social Club #1)

Bayou’s End (Rougaroux Social Club #2)

Bayou Loup (Rougaroux Social Club #3)

Review of Sullivan (Leopard’s Spots #7) by Bailey Bradford

Rating: 2.5 stars

Sullivan Leopards Spots 7Sullivan “Sully” Ward is heading off to college, full of excitement and ready to try new things, a true small town boy come to the big city.  Sully lands in Texas, San Antonia to be exact, ready for life as a student at UTSA and to see what life in San Antonio will hold for a young inexperienced leopard  shifter.  And it isn’t long before he runs into trouble in the wrong side of town and ends up saving a young hustler named Mando.  Mando is under age , just another teenager thrown away because his parents didn’t want a gay son.  Sully takes him into the awful apartment he rented online, feeds him as Mando reminds him of his younger brother and decides now Mando has a home with him.

When he talks to his parents back home, his story stirs up concerns that Sully is in over his head so they contact Bobby Baker, the wolf shifter brother to Josiah, pack alpha and mate to Sully’s cousin.  Bobby and his pack live in San Antonio. All Bobby has to do is check to make sure  Sully is fine and that Mando isn’t a trouble maker.  But from the first meeting, it is clear the trouble is not from Mando but from the fact that Sully and Bobby are mates.  Sully is ignorant of the effect it has on the partners who have found their mates but Bobby isn’t.  He knows Sully is his mate and it scares him enough to send him running after a bout of intense sex, especially for a virgin like Sully.

To make matters worse, there is a psycho stalking Bobby’s pack and an arsonist loose setting fires in Bobby’s clubs. And they both appear to be targeting Bobby and anyone Bobby loves.  Bobby must come to grips with his destiny and accept Sully as his mate and soon.  Sully and Bobby have an arsonist to track and in a horrifying turn of events, an attack to revenge.

Out of the seven books of the Leopard’s Spots series, this is the worst by far.  Bradford is getting farther away from the unique elements of this series, that of the Leopard Shifter history, their interaction with the Amur Leopards, and the mystery of a group of people intent on drugging and experimenting on them.  All of that is not even mentioned here as we track back to the wolf shifters of Texas that are attached to the story via Josiah and Oscar (Leopard’s Spots #2).  But that is the least of the problems here.

Bobby Baker was introduced in the last book and he was an exciting, exasperating character.  I would have hoped that if Bradford was going to abandon the Amur Leopards, at least we would have a good book out of it.  But instead we get a book that is 5 percent promise, mostly because of the character of Mando, the vulnerable, underage hustler Sully has taken under his wing and his “brother like” relationship with Sully.  Those scenes were charming, endearing, funny and held out the promise that the rest of the book would be of a similar vein.  Not so as the remaining 95 percent focuses in on the mate relationship between Bobby and Sully.This turns out to be much less affecting as they  have little chemistry as a couple, and Bobby spends most of the book fighting his role as Sully’s mate.  His club is literally burning down around him,a person close to Sully is heinously attacked by the nutjob stalking Bobby, and the two of them are having ridiculous amounts of sex and paying no attention to anything else.  These two act in such an irrational manner that the reader’s frustrations almost exceed the amount of sex they are having.

Finally, most of the goodwill this book generates is destroyed in a grievous attack on a character we have come to adore.  Mostly because it seems superfluous to the rest of the action going on and the depth of emotional and physical destruction visited upon this person is really unnecessary. It really seems such a waste of characters that had such marvelous potential and a mess of a storyline that was resolved far too quickly for the buildup and really made little sense.

I will probably stick with this series because I can’t believe it can get much worse than this.  But like a TV columnist says in his intro, “I watch these shows so you don’t have to”.  I will just say I am reading these books so you don’t have to.  And trust my word,  you really don’t want to read Sullivan (Leopard’s Spots #7).

Levi (Leopards Spots #1)

Oscar (Leopards Spots #2) read my review here.

Timothy (Leopards Spots #3) read my review here

Isaiah (Leopards Spots #4) read my review here

Gilbert (Leopards Spots #5) read my review here

Esau (Leopards Spots #6)

Sullivan (Leopards Spots #7)