Caden O'Brien's Website

I just wrote a review of Noah Boyd’s wonderful debut novel, The Bricklayer, and you can read it here on the LibraryThing site. It’s the kind of book that would appeal to those who don’t particularly care for thrillers, because it delivers great characters in protagonist Steve Vail and his maybe-love-interest Kate Bannon. The heroes in thrillers can be very wooden and uninteresting, but Boyd does a nice job in introducing Vail, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series!

Available on January 26, and you can pre-order now.

As I was browsing Ilona Andrews’ website the other day, I stumbled on a post that contained a snippet of an unpublished work. No title except the tag ‘Alpha Menz’, very rough, not complete,  it was one of those pieces that made me go “what the hell?” as I read it. Several other snippets had been posted early in 2009, which I hadn’t read yet, but what I’d read sent me scrambling to find the other posts.

This was something cooked up to deal with a little brain-fry caused by working long hours on one of their published books, and all I can say is “wow, this deserves to be published!” I have to warn you, as is posted on their site, this is a dark piece with disturbing themes. A young mother and her little girl get kidnapped by … well, it’s hard to tell WHAT they are. But they’re not nice. At all. They terrify the mother and daughter, and they don’t care. Oooooo. I love dark fiction, and this is pretty dark.  Read the warnings posted with each piece, and proceed accordingly.

This is the order the pieces should be read in. It’s a little confusing on their site, but just follow this order and ignore the titles of the posts because they’re a bit misleading. And if you want to see more, be sure to drop a comment saying so. Enjoy!

1. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/03/06/opening-chapter-of-alpha-menz/
2. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/03/07/alpha-men-final/
3. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/11/23/okay/
4. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/11/23/alpha-menz-snippet-part-2/

    

This first book in a new series by husband & wife team Ilona Andrews. It features 22 year old Rose, magically gifted and living in The Edge. The Edge is a small strip of land stretching between the Broken (the non-magical world we live in) and the Weird (chock full of magical beings and run by a hierarchy of nobles in a very feudal setting). Edge dwellers generally have a little magic, but are looked down on by the aristocratic Weird citizens. She lives a tough life, working a low-paid job in the Broken and trying to support her two little brothers Georgie and Jack. Because Rose is an unusually powerful magic-wielder, she also has to fight off kidnappers who want to sell her to the blue-bloods and Edge-dwellers who want her for breeding stock.

One day a blueblood warrior named Declan Camarine shows up wanting to take her back to the Weird as his woman. She pops him with her cross-bow and gives him a big HELLS-NO, and the game is on. Evil creatures are stalking the Edge and its citizens, and it’s up to Rose in an uneasy partnership with Declan to stop the killings.

One thing I love is when an author builds a world that grips me with its depth, multiple dimensions, and realism tinted with a reality brush. This world is fabulous, and I wish it had been set in an epic fantasy framework because I really wanted more slice-of-life from the Edge and Weird dimensions. I could just imagine what it would be like living there, and my mind spun off little fantasy stories set in that world. Big plus points here, and I hope the next book continues to build on it.

Another thing that hits my hot button is strong female characters. Rose is young, but her life has been hard. Seems like parenting in the Edge is an iffy proposition, and she’s had to deal with a crazy mother who was the local sleep-around and a runaway dad from early on. Realistic characters also do it – this world is people with the same loonies, abusers, and deadbeats as our own world. It definitely is not one where everyone makes nice to one another. In fact, you have to be careful even with your friends, because they all work off an “every man/woman for him/herself” framework. Rose is cynical enough to know how to play the game, but not so jaded that she doesn’t still have hopes and dreams of a normal life. But bad things can happen to good people in this world, so this isn’t a mindlessly cheerful outlook.

Rose and Declan are hot together, even when they’re not together. A good tale. The picture of Declan on the cover is a horrible one! From the description, he looks nothing like that and thank goodness! The little brothers, Georgie and Jack, steal the show. Georgie is a young necromancer, whose love of life makes him revive all kinds of sad dead critters at the expense of draining his own life away. Jack is a shapeshifter who is more comfortable in his cat (lynx) form than his human one. The way Rose loves and cares for these special little boys, and their love for her, brought me to tears several times!

I’m looking forward to the next book. This one is pretty self-contained, so it seems the next one will need to focus on another character. I’m hoping William, Declan’s tortured and gorgeous shape-shifting friend and army-mate, gets a book because we sure were teased enough!

The first vendor to get Book 4 of Amy Lane’s fabulous Little Goddess series on the shelf is iUniverse – click here to get Rampant! They even have a very badly formatted excerpt of the first 2000 words, so you get a little sneak-peek. 

I’m a huge fan of indie author Amy Lane, and am excited to make this announcement. We’ve been waiting a while for this book to come out, and it’s now here! Update:  Now available from Amazon!
Enjoy!