Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

“Werewolves can be dangerous if you get in their way, but they’ll leave you alone if you are careful. They are very good at hiding their natures from the human population, but I’m not human. I know them when I meet them, and they know me, too.

Mercy Thompson’s sexy next-door neighbor is a werewolf.

She’s tinkering with a VW bus at her mechanic shop that happens to belong to a vampire.

But then, Mercy Thompson is not exactly normal herself… and her connection to the world of things that go bump in the night is about to get her into a whole lot of trouble.”

 

Mercy Thompson is a walker, more commonly known as a shape-shifter, unlike weres she’s not bound to the moon and can change whenever she wants, her coyote form is faster than a wolf, she’s got the same enhanced sense of smell and hearing, silver won’t harm her but unlike werewolves she heals just like a regular person. There are no other walkers left, at least Mercy has never met another, her father descended from native American medicine doctors but he died when she was a baby and her mother never knew much about him or his ancestors. She was raised by a couple of werewolves and knows more about them than she does about her own people, as the story progresses we get the feeling that there’s more to Mercy than meets the eye, she’s immune to vampire magic for starters and there’s some kind of secret behind the fact that her people were practically decimated by them.

But Mercy doesn’t feel special, she’s your regular VW mechanic trying to make an honest living, for once we’ve got a brunette heroine, I was getting sick and tired of perfect blonds, you probably think the hair colour doesn’t matter much, but trust me, it gets annoying after a while. One day a werewolf turns up at her door looking for work, he doesn’t belong to the local pack and it doesn’t look like he’s been a werewolf for long, when a couple of days later he suffers an attack in front of her garage and Mercy is forced to kill a young werewolf, she decides to involve the local pack leader, Adam, her hunky next door neighbour. And that’s where the story starts!

Patricia Briggs’ sense of humour is perfect, not over the top as most paranormal authors tend to be, it was the subtle details that made me laugh out loud, she’s got a Russian witch coming out to clean up the messes, hide bodies, clean up blood, etc., acting just like the Russian mob, the repartee between Mercy and Adam, when she left her old car right in front of his bedroom window just to rile him up and still threaten to take off three tires if he annoyed her, the fact that Samuel would go into the playground as a wolf and play with the children, pretending he was just a big dog and serving as a pony.

The story is well crafted, the outcome was unpredictable, but I felt the most important thing in this book were the characters, their lives, their past, their secrets, even the secondary characters were interesting, I loved Kyle, Warren’s partner, I laughed out loud when he came on to Samuel just to make him uncomfortable, Elizaveta, the Russian witch was hilarious, commanding everyone, even the big and scary werewolves. I think the author managed to not make Mercy the centre of all the attentions, she’s important, we want to know more about her, but she doesn’t steal the scene and completely obliterate the other characters.

I really have to thank A. for almost beating me up if I didn’t read this series and C. for bringing me the first three books from New York. Thanks girls! I’ll probably be reading Blood Bound next, I’m really curious about what’s going to happen next and I’m so hoping Samuel disappears, his reasons for wanting to run away with Mercy when she was fifteen were revolting, Adam on the other hand has my total support and I fell in love with him from the start! ;-) I also want to know more about Mercy’s abilities and past!

 

Rating: 4.5/5

Entertainment Weekly’s New Classics

Entertainment Weekly came up with a list of the Top 100 New Classics, Marg posted this on her blog and following A.’s lead I decided to “steal” the idea and see what I’ve read and haven’t read.

 

Already Read
To Be Read
Given Up On
 

1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)

2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J. K. Rowling (2000)

3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)

4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)

5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)

6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)

7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)

8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)

9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)

10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)

11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)

12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)

13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)

14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)

15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)

16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)

17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)

18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)

19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)

20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)

21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)

22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)

23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)

24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)

25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)

26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)

27. Possession, A. S. Byatt (1990)

28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)

29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)

30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)

31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)

32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)

33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)

34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)

35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)

36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)

37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)

38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)

39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)

40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)

41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)

42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)

43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)

44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)

45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)

46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)

47. World’s Fair, E. L. Doctorow (1985)

48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)

49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)

50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)

51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)

52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)

53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)

54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)

55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)

56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)

57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)

58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)

59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)

60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)

61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)

62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)

63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)

64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)

65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)

66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)

67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)

68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)

69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)

70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)

71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)

72. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)

73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)

74. Friday Night Lights, H. G. Bissinger (1990)

75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)

76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)

77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)

78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)

79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)

81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)

82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)

83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)

84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)

85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)

86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)

87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)

88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)

89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)

90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)

91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)

92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)

93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)

94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)

95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)

96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)

97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)

98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)

99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)

100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

 

My total amounts to 13 read books, but apart from the ones I already have in my TBR pile I have to confess that the rest really doesn’t interest me. This looks like a very American oriented list and with a couple dubious choices of what makes a classic, in my humble opinion!

Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh

“In a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of “rehabilitation” - the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was…

Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy coexistence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murders of several changeling women. Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion - and that the animal in him is fascinated by her. Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities - or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation…”

 

Years have passed and our world has evolved, there are now three races, humans, Psy and Changelings. The Psy are known for being cold, detached, emotionless beings with psychic abilities of all kinds, they all share a mental link by connecting to the Psy Net, an unlimited information database somewhat similar to our Internet. The Changelings live in close-knit packs, be they of wolves, leopards or whatever else, they thrive on proximity, touch, smell, among the pack members and despite not having psychic abilities they share a common bond, a feeling that lets them know if another pack member is hurt, lost or in need of help.

Sascha isn’t a normal Psy, she thinks of herself as flawed, broken, only because she’s able to feel emotions, ever since she can remember she’s had to build protective walls around herself so that other Psy can’t discover her true nature, or she’s bound to be committed, an even worse fate than death.

Lately someone has been preying on changeling girls, one of the victims was part of the local leopard pack and now its alpha, Lucas Hunter, is looking for the murderer. His investigations lead him to believe that it’s someone from the Psy that is abducting the girls, and to uncover the truth he has to get closer to the Psy, to Sascha.

This author was another recommendation from my paranormal guru, A., she always seems to know which books to recommend and which to warn me against. I was somewhat afraid of the sci-fi elements in the story, as I’m not much of a fan of the genre, and although I had some problems understanding and picturing how the Psy Net worked, I fell in love with the world, the author managed to build believable and compelling characters, both main and secondary. There were a couple of unforgettable scenes, especially the first time Sascha tasted chocolate and when the two cubs decided to start chewing on her boots, not to mention every time Sascha and Lucas were together, sparks flew. This book has a little bit of everything, mystery, romance, humour, drama and paranormal fans are sure to fall in love just like I did!

As we speak there are more Psy-Changeling books on their way to me and I can’t wait to get my hands on them. I just have one question for the author, when are you going to write Hawke’s story? ;-)

 

Rating: 4.5/5

Goodbye Euro 2008!

Good game guys! See you in 2010!

Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn

“Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station - and a werewolf in the closet. Sick of lame song requests, she accidentally starts “The Midnight Hour”, a late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged.
After desperate vampires, werewolves, and witches across the country begin calling in to share their woes, her new show is a raging success. But it’s Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew…”
 
 
 

Two of the endorsements on the cover of this book should have been enough warning for me not to pick it up, but what can I say, I’m stubborn. One of the authors says, “You’ll love this!… This is vintage Anita Blake…”, well, I hated Anita Blake, Guilty Pleasures was my first and only book by Laurell K. Hamilton, I’ve steered clear of her work ever since. The other endorsement is by Charlaine Harris, the acclaimed author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, let’s just say that I’m not a Sookie fan either and leave it at that. Nevertheless I decided to give this one a try cause you never know when to trust cover endorsements, well, in this case the first author hit the bullseye, it’s so much like Anita Blake that I hated Kitty Norville from the very start!

Kitty is a werewolf (corny name by the way!), she was attacked three years ago but she’s so comfortable inside her wolf skin that you’d think she’d been born one, we’re only told what happened to her closer to the end, but even then it’s like she’s talking about someone else’s life, there’s no emotion. She works at KNOB, one of Denver’s radio stations, one night bored out of her mind she starts talking about the supernatural world, and thus “The Midnight Hour” is born, one of the station’s greatest hit shows where she gives advice to all supernatural beings.

One of the many things that made me dislike this book was the fact that in a world like ours, where the supernatural is the stuff of legends, suddenly a radio DJ comes out of the closet live and confesses she’s a werewolf, and everyone’s mostly okay with it. Doesn’t this sound a little unbelievable? Or is it just me? I would have expected a little more drama than her parents calling her and saying, “You should have told us sooner, dear!”, like she was just gay and not a supernatural creature.

From the start I felt like the story was disjointed, the author would jump ahead two or three days and sometimes even weeks, without us knowing what happened in between. Kitty was supposed to be investigating a cult, we never see her doing it but she’s able to gather the information somehow. That leads me to ask what was the point of the book if nothing ever happens apart from pack fights, radio chit chat and more pack fights?

Werewolves usually belong to a pack, Kitty is no exception, the alpha male of her pack, Carl, is Kitty’s companion, well, her’s and everyone else’s. The author describes him as follows, “Alpha’s prerogative: He fucks whomever he wants in the pack, whenever he wants. One of the perks of the position. It was also one of the reasons I melted around him.”. Huh? Attractive right? At least Kitty seems to think so! :-s I for one don’t, and I also felt a touch of S&M throughout the story, every time Kitty and Carl were together, first he would beat her up and then he would have sex with her, not to mention that one of the scenes had wolf sex in it, I could really have done without it!

This book really rubbed me the wrong way, I got tired of hearing Kitty talk about her wolf self in the third person, she always seemed to get herself in the most stupid situations and then act all innocent, in the end she always came out on top, never mind getting someone else killed in the act. You’ve probably guessed that I won’t be going near any more Kitty Norville books, most people seem to enjoy them so it’s probably just me! ;-)

 
Rating: 1/5

Enchanting the Lady by Kathryne Kennedy

“In a world where magic ruled everything, Felicity Seymour couldn’t perform even the simplest spell. If she didn’t pass her testing, she’d lose her duchy - and any hope of marriage. But one man didn’t seem to mind her lack of dowry: a darkly delicious baronet who had managed to scare away the rest of London’s Society misses.
Sir Terence Blackwell knew the enchanting woman before him wasn’t entirely without magic. Not only could she completely disarm him with her gorgeous lavender eyes and frank candor, but his were-lion senses could smell a dark power on her - the same kind of relic-magic that had killed his brother. Was she using it herself, or was it being used against her?
One needed a husband, and the other needed answers. But only together could they find the strongest magic of all: true love.”
 

Felicity Seymour lives with her aunt and uncle in Victorian London where titles are given according to one’s magical powers, although her late parents were at dukedom level she’s shown very little magical abilities up until now. The day of her testing arrives, she’ll have to show Prince Albert and his peers that she’s worthy of her duchy, unfortunately she fails terribly and is immediately stripped of her title and all her possessions.

Sir Terence Blackwell is a baronet at the service of Prince Albert, being a shape shifter he has no powers of his own but his kind is immune to magic, which gives him an advantage when searching for Merlin’s relics, ancient power items that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. While watching Felicity’s testing he senses the power of evil relic magic emanating from the girl, it’s just a smidge but he decides to investigate further by getting closer to her.

And so the story begins… When I started this book I thought I was in for a treat, all the reviews seem to rave about it, some even say it’s probably going to be one of the best books of the year. Well, it’s definitely going on my top five, there’s no question about it, the top five worst books of 2008, right along with The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne. What a disappointment!

Felicity is one of those TSTL heroines that you just want to hit with a hot iron right on the head as soon as you meet her. She’s described as a shy and innocent girl, so you’re really not expecting it when she almost jumps Sir Terence’s bones when she meets him at the royal ball. The first time he pays her courtship at her uncle’s house they have a hard time keeping their hands off each other, right in front of the maid. Talk about unlikely! She’s so stupid that she never questioned the reason why everyone seemed to forgot about her, people even sat on her and bumped into her and she thought it was normal. Right! And let’s not even talk about the evil doers, they’re so blatantly obvious from the beginning that it’s not even funny.

Sir Terence was one of those characters that showed promise but never really delivered it, the author could have worked harder on him, he’s a were-lion but most of the time he looked like a tame kitten. Such unexplored potential! He spends most of his time looking for and worrying about the relic and in the end he only cares about the heroine, it was an extremely anti-climatic ending. I’m definitely not picking up the next one in the series!

 

Rating: 1/5

Tuna Burger

I’ve been feeling like cooking and trying out different recipes lately but payday is only on Friday and I have to make do with what I already have at home, so yesterday I started browsing for tuna recipes. I’ve tried tuna lasagna, pizza and cannelloni but I never had tuna burgers. At first it sounded like a strange idea but on every blog I visited it always had rave reviews, so as I always try to follow the rule of “don’t mock it until you’ve tried it”, I decided we were going to have tuna burgers for dinner.

The task of deciding which recipe to try was a much harder one, every single recipe seemed to have a different ingredient and there wasn’t one that fully satisfied me, there was this one, this one, this one and tons of others, so picking an ingredient here, another there, I came up with a recipe of my own. And if I may say so myself the outcome was excellent and surely something we’ll have again!

It’s also easy to do! I mixed together two cans of tuna, one chopped onion, a small amount of finely chopped pickles and two teaspoons of Dijon mustard, to season I added a pinch of ground nutmeg, salt, ground pepper and just a tiny bit of powder malagueta. In the end I mixed in one egg and just enough breadcrumbs to help mould the four hamburgers that I chose to grill instead of frying.

Four hamburger buns, thin slices of cheese, french fries and tartar sauce completed the dish and made one very easy and yummy dinner!

 

Fusilli with Bacon and Mushrooms

Elvira’s Bistrot is my main source for yummy recipes, every day there are new tempting ones, I’m always wanting to try this or that one, so to keep them all organized I signed up at del.icio.us and now all my important bookmarks are stored in one place, my del.icio.us.

Yesterday I didn’t have much time to cook so I wanted something simple but still different, and this recipe was just perfect, especially for a pasta lover like me. I don’t really like fresh parsley so I used ground parsley instead, I know it’s not really the same but I just can’t stand its strong flavour, I forgot to buy fresh mushrooms when I was at the supermarket so I had to use the canned kind, I much prefer fresh ones but I went with what I had, and finally I added green olives finely sliced which brought out the sauce’s flavour.

The outcome was excellent and I was told it could be repeated! Next time though I’m making some changes, instead of bacon I’m using ham, I won’t forget the fresh mushrooms, I’m still using the sliced green olives and I’m making more sauce, I felt it could have used a little more, but that’s just me, I love pasta with lots of sauce. ;-)

 

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