The Outsider series book 1
ISBN: 9780982175682
I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Readers program.
Warning: I am rating this book DNF.
The premise has potential, Livvie is a Soul Catcher, gifted with the power to magically summon demons via painting them then banishing them by burning the painting. She is also a multi-reincarnated soul who is haunted by a soul mate and a demon who refuses to let them be together.
In execution though the book fails on nearly every level. Livvie is a character straight out of addict recovery show, rambling about relatively unimportant things one minute, setting up scenes the next only to ramble some more and finally update the reader on what they missed while she was rambling. It’s like the author and character have teamed up to avoid actually showing the story. Not to mention Livvie’s horrible drug use is more like Tylenol PMs and wine.
Apparently in the first few scenes Livvie dreams of Pig Face, the demon who has been killing herself and her soul mate for countless lives. Instead of burning the painting the painting flies out of Livvie’s hands in a sudden and fortuitous gust of wind. This of course means Pig Face escapes the painting. However the only way I knew that this is what happened, and that it was a major plot event, is because I read other reviews that explained this. These “major events” are written in a style that makes them seem convoluted, utterly unimportant and routine.
Pig Face apparently possesses the body of a man Livvie shows interest in, gains her trust after a few exchanged lines of dialog and leads her outside where he beats her and rapes her. The actual action (not that I’m eager to read that scene) is all off screen and only explained after a chapter break in brief retrospect, much like all the action in this book so far.
Livvie receives aid from her landlords, who, as Livvie is barely conscious, sum up everything that’s happened so far in the book (apparently they are all-knowing NPCs) in explanation to each other. These two go on to call what happened to Livvie “a downer” and explain that they are some sort of soul friends who know all about her, what she is, and who Pig Face and Ian are too. Rather than taking Livvie to a hospital to, you know check for brain damage and internal injuries, they just stitch her up themselves in their spare bedroom.
The hot mess of a plot continues to ramble on, with more actual on screen scenes, that don’t make much more sense, until about fifty pages in when Pig Face attacks Livvie again (in a police station, with a bunch of cops nearby, where they were accusing her of killing a guy she worked with, who killed himself in public, and who had no other link to her). Only this time Livvie calls to Ian (who I’m assuming is haunting her) for help and Ian ends up possessing the body Pig Face raped Livvie with.
I gave up on this book not much after, when more rambling started. I personally despise rape-as-romance plots. No amount of this style of writing or these flat characters was going to redeem this book for me, especially if it continued to spend the next two hundred pages alternating between “Livvie is crazy”, “Pig Face is brutally and gorily attacking everyone she’s ever known” and “Livvie needs to trust this guy who raped her in the second chapter because they are true loves”.
This book was just too convoluted, with Livvie’s completely unlikable nature, Pig Face’s cruel torturous slaughter for no reason other than he could, and the constant distractions from every ghost, animal, “boon” and spirit talking to Livvie (seriously, two spirits in the form of flies tried to protect her by buzzing around a cop’s head to distract him). The world building is so confusing I never had any solid picture of the characters, the places, or even the rules of the magical world. I cannot recommend this book, because I cannot think of a single avid reader that I know of who would find it an exciting, enjoyable read.
Review by Jason Lush
This book was received through the LibraryThing Early Reader’s Program.
ISBN: 9781932603774
First off, the subject matter narrows the reader pool down to those living with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) and the people who care for them. But that is where the problems end. The Mayo Clinic Guide to Living with a Spinal Cord Injury is written by leaders in medical research and successfully avoids, or explains where needed, medical jargon. But the writing also isn’t dumbed down to the point of being patronizing either.
At first, I was skeptical about how useful this 200 page tome would be, but with the clear, helpful illustrations and truly useful tips about life style changes that will be beneficial no matter the degree of damage sustained by the patient, my mind has been changed. The unique thing about this title is that the authors did not focus solely on the effects SCI has on the patient’s spine, the book also thoroughly explores the effects SCI has on the patient’s other systems, such as cardiac, nervous and digestive. It also sheds light on the psychological effects on patients and caretakers. The Mayo Clinic Guide to Living with a Spinal Cord Injury is a pleasant, easy read, suitable for anyone affected by an SCI.
This book was donated to the Primal Faith Foundation by author Michele Lee.
30
Oct
ISBN: 9780060506650
I received this book free through the LibraryThing Early Readers Program.
Manny Rupert, an addict, a cop kicked off the force, an the ex-husband of a murderer, is back for round two. This time he’s been hired to go undercover in San Quentin and determine whether a sick old man in for vehicular manslaughter is really who he claims to be—the infamous Nazi Doctor of Death, Joseph Mengele.
That’s where Pain Killers starts, but where it goes is on an insane, gritty, noir venture through the darkest parts of society. Pain Killers is a humorous black romp if by humorous you mean “Oh my God they went there” and by romp you mean going by limo from prison snail back love shack to Christian porn sets to meth houses and mansions and back again. This novel is, to steal a line, truly, truly outrageous.
Stahl’s humor is not for everyone, possibly not for anyone that possesses an iota of sensitivity about religion, psychology, the human condition, addiction, sex, or just about any subject. But there’s a sort of victorious feel to seeing character so truly messed up still intelligent and stubborn and taking on the face of human evil. There’s more talking than action, so the pace is not forceful or fast. At times the conversations while interesting and amusing come off as off topic, when the point is to solve a mystery. And the WTF factor is, at times, very high. But it’s a wild ride, different from everything else out there which certainly has an audience in today’s marketplace.
ISBN: 9781416551959
The back of this book bills it as a zany, thrilling mystery wherein our heroine, the quirky Dr. Amanda Bell Brown must find the cause for the death of a disgraced playboy evangelist’s baby. I received a copy by request through the LibraryThing Early Readers Program (where it was not disclosed that it was Christian fiction) and I requested it because fiction with minority leads is something I’m actively trying to include more of here at BookLove.
Unfortunately, I simply could not get into this book.
The story opens with a long, lamenting conversation between Bell and her BFF/kinda of love interest (except she’s married) which covers a lot of what happened in the first two books in the series and what happened between books. As a first time reader I was left with absolutely no clue what was going on, other than Bell, in an effort to make up with Rocky (the BFF who apparently put her marriage in danger before abandoning her, and who repeatedly teases her and calls her “babe” constantly) agrees to go visit a disgraced evangelist trying to make a comeback.
The second chapter opens with Bell and Rocky arriving at the location where the evangelist is filming his sermon. Bell is promptly assaulted by an old religious woman who calls Bell a hussy for being there with her pastor, and forcibly exorcises her, claiming a demon of interracial adultery is dwelling inside of her. Rocky, the charming BFF that he is, sits in his VIP seat and is amused by the antics, doing nothing at all to help.
After the sermon Rocky gets Bell backstage to meet the evangelist, Ezekiel Thunder. It’s there that Bell meets Little Zeke Thunder, Big Thunder’s 2 year old son. Bell is smitten, but launches into heartache over her own inability to have children, save for the fact that she’s been nauseated a lot lately. But she can’t have kids, she reassures herself, because she had a period since her husband left her and she has endometriosis, not to mention she has a tumor. With the subtly of a brick to the face, this “I can’t be pregnant despite obvious weight gain, morning sickness and soreness” becomes a repetitive source of angst. When Bell finally moves past the topic secondary characters constantly bring it up, accusing her of being pregnant, kicking off the whole response again.
In chapters three and four Bell insists she isn’t pregnant, then is threatened by the same person who assaulted her in the previous chapter, blatantly and maliciously manipulated by Thunder, again while her BFF Rocky just stands to the side, or defends Thunder.
It is never really explained why Rocky wants her to meet this clearly malicious, manipulative preacher. There’s eventually something about Rocky wanting her to find God again, but that should never excuse the sort of behavior Bell has been subjected to.
In chapter five Bell finally does something that made me like her, she self soothes with a peppy new haircut. But when she returns to work she discovers her parking lot filled with the vehicles of all her closest, except her husband. Despite being forewarned Bell walks into the intervention. What is traditionally a last ditch effort to get a person with substance abuse to realize the extent of their actions is bastardized in this chapter as Bell’s nearest and dearest claim the intervention is because she’s fat, because her husband (who left her) is heart broken without her and she should go back to him, and because she is clearly pregnant and too old to be so (Bell is 35). The conversation is excessively scattered and even deviates into one of Bell’s friends claiming it’s not always all about Bell, except one would assume that an intervention IS about the person being confronted.
I stopped when I read the following interaction:
“If Jazz (Bell’s husband) is the one who left me, and he’s the one who is drinking excessively, why didn’t you do the intervention with him?”
“Because all of this is your fault,” my mother said.
If I hadn’t been at a doctor’s appointment I would have flung the book across the room. I did try to skip ahead in the book to see if it picked up, only to land on a scene where a doctor tells Bell and her husband, Jazz that Bell has a grapefruit-sized tumor, several grape=sized tumors and is also pregnant with twins.
The artificial drama is staggering in this book and completely distracts from the mystery Deadly Charm is advertised as containing. There is no time or build up to allow for readers to grow attached to Bell and having every character treating her like utter crap doesn’t make her sympathetic. Furthermore the pregnancy side plot is a huge problem. The medical problems (pregnant, with tumors) reads as more unbelievable, and unneeded drama, there’s never a question in the reader’s mind whether Bell is pregnant or not, and the utter insensitivity that everyone else in the book shows for Bell’s reproductive problems is pretty insulting.
It’s a bad combination of writing flaws, so Deadly Charm ends up in the DNF pile.
Click to buy
Any Given Doomsday, for better or worse is best summed up as what the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton would be if all supernatural creatures (almost) were actually the spawn of fallen angels, left on Earth to challenge (aka slaughter) humankind.
The set up demands that readers accept the absolute existence of God and the Christian mythos, whereas most urban fantasies ask a reader to believe in the creature, but leave religion out of the picture. This can potentially bring Christian readers into urban fantasy, if they can get past the sex.
And the sex… is non-consenting. Definitely an aspect that will turn off many readers Elizabeth, the heroine, is drugged, and raped graphically multiple times within the book. This is completely forgivable (in the context of the story) because sex is vital to Elizabeth’s powers. While I normally avoid giving such blatant spoilers these I found particularly troubling.
The story itself starts when Elizabeth Phoenix finds her foster mother dying on floor of her home, attacked by something Elizabeth can’t explain. With a few cryptic words and a dark vision Ruthie passes something on to Elizabeth that lands Elizabeth in a coma. When she wakes up Elizabeth learns from her ex-coworkers, the Milwaukee PD, that her foster brother and ex-lover Jimmy is their number one suspect. Jimmy himself breaks the news that Ruthie passed her powers to Elizabeth, which makes Elizabeth obligated–for her own safety–to hunt down Ruthie’s killers. And Elizabeth isn’t just a seer, she’s THE prophesied seer, meant to be the most powerful one, a seer and a demon killer and the person who is supposed to lead the side of good in the war against the evil Nephalim.
Elizabeth’s complete lack of knowledge about the supernatural world does not set the story up in a good frame. Instead of being introduced to the rules of the magical world slowly it leads to the reader, like Elizabeth, to have no clue what’s going on, but being pressured to accept tension, and to see Elizabeth attacked with no real idea of how these things are important. The pacing is slow, the revelations convenient and Elizabeth herself is a much quieter, less dynamic urban fantasy character.
The pace is unsure, more than once a fact is hidden from the reader for effect, though the story is told in first person and Elizabeth herself already knows of it. Readers are never given a solid idea of the “rules” of magic and the paranormal because they seem cherry picked for effect rather than for character building. While all Nephalim are absolutely evil both men presented as love interests have Nephalim blood and Elizabeth herself may have (after all, she has everything else that might make her powerful, other than strength of personality).
Any Given Doomsday has action, but feels slow despite it, reluctant to participate in or commit itself to its own story. The similarities to other series and the Biblical/Apocalyptic set up could bring in a fan base, but many will find this book vapid and unsatisfying.
Click to Buy
*I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reader Program.
If you love real life ghost stories and tales of haunted houses, hospitals and highways this is an excellent book for you. A compendium of tales of apparitions and mysterious happenings the book is cut into small, easy to digest pieces and often includes contact information for the restaurants, hotels and stores that claim to have ghostly residents.
Rule does offer some research into the possible identities of the ghosts, as well as token information on area ghost hunters and enough contact information to plan a ghost theme vacation.
She doesn’t offer a skeptic’s point of view or attempt to make the otherworldly scientific (aside from mentioning EVPs and batteries draining on investigations). She does include many interesting pictures that while not supernatural are mood setting.
If you don’t like tales of hauntings then you won’t find anything new here. But ghost fans can be insatiable and this is a fine starting place or addition to a fan’s library.
Review by M.A. Hunt
Click to Buy
Any Given Doomsday, by Lori Handeland, is the first book in her The Phoenix Chronicles series.
Elizabeth Phoenix is a young ex-cop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, now working in the bar owned by her deceased partner’s wife, Megan Murphy… Murphy’s Bar, of course.
This is a small indication of the kind of wit Handeland brings to this tale.
Phoenix has some latent psychic powers, aided and abetted to partial fruition by two not-quite-human men, Jimmy Sanducci, whom she’s known since childhood, and Sawyer, a Navajo witch, and a dead mentor, Ruthie Kane, who is very much from the same vein as the guide in the Matrix Trilogy, of popular film.
A wonderful romp of a novel, filled with things from the underworld, and beyond, written by a highly intelligent author.
Unfortunately, it’s not until chapter 23 that the real story begins.
The first 22 chapters are mostly filled with fluff, aka ‘back story’, which she would have been better off disseminating in dribs and drabs throughout, as she unfolded the tale, rather than bunch it all upfront.
From there on, Handeland shows considerable and impressive talent in the progression of the tale, even if some of her obvious wit becomes a tad tedious, but it’s a compelling, page-turning read.
If the blurb for the next book is any indication, Doomsday Can Wait promises to be a continuation of very strong storytelling.
Review by Michael Lush
In his study of the American male Guy Garcia exposes the ugly truth that all men want to hide but desperately need shown, our weakness in today’s age of networking and social strong arming. The author adequately displays how the feminist movement empowered women but in essence castrated an entire nation of men.
We live in an age where all the strengths that helped us make it out of the caves has made us all but useless in the world we created. Guy Garcia points to a lot of statistics making the work informative but a little dry, then blind sides you with two chapters about Mattel’s Ken and Superman, referring to them as both real men and symbols of what we are and what we used to be, respectively a useless metrosexual and an idealized figure of manhood. The fact that he spoke of both characters as if they were true flesh and blood men seemed a little silly and out of place in this particular work.
In the end we see that our Pop Icons are mirrors of what we think a “Man” should be but can never live up to ourselves. In short the implication is that instead of living up to our traditional ideas of manhood we should just redefine what it is to be a man.
Seems a bit lazy to me, but hell what ever makes you sleep better at night.