Looking Forward to:

Bleeding Violet releases January 5, 2010

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves. I read about this book on an Urban Fantasy Blog post by Jo_Scrawls. She absolutely loves this book; a character that is diagnosed and mis-diagnosed, strange happenings in a town she goes to, bi-racial with all the baggage that can come from that when you know next to nothing about one side of you, voices in your head, worried about fitting in, danger, - There is a lot going on in this book and according to Jo_Scrawls, it all works.

Sometimes when I find a review where there is a lot of excitement for the book, then I want to find an excerpt to see what the dialogue is like. The book could have the best plot and situations in the whole world and then be ruined for me by inane or downright stupid dialogue that doesn't match the characters. Or over-the-top dialogue, over dramatic, whiny-angsty-angry-sullen dialogue (like some of Anita Blake's "boyfriends" who are feeling left out) that just brings the whole book down. Like slowcooking shredded pork and looking forward to it all day just to find out that you put so much salt in it, now all you can taste is salt. Ughhh! All the previous words I've written in this paragraph boil down to this: I found an excerpt of Bleeding Violet over at Simon & Schuster. From the cover, above the picture "Crazy never looked so beautiful". The dialogue doesn't suck. In fact there is some great dialogue that goes on in Hanna's head between her dead father and her.

The excerpt promises a pretty good entertaining book. I'm going to be on the look-out for this one. Bleeding Violet is Dia Reeves debut dark fantasy for YA - recommended for ages 14+.

The cover - the first time a saw a cover like this with a girl's legs visible and filmy material flowing around her and kind of across the book - was with Rachel Vincent's My Soul to Take book. Now I'm seeing similar covers all over. I wish publishers would be a litle more original. Although I'm sure it must be hard to come up with original artwork for the thousands of books that come out each year. Some of these covers though, are so close they could be identical twins.

Other books coming out that I'm looking forward to include Blood Cross by Faith Hunter (a Jane Yellowrock adventure) and The Good, The Bad and the Uncanny by Simon R. Green (Nightside novel). I'm so far behind on the Nightside novels, that I think there are three of his books I haven't read yet.

(maybe I'll do the pictures later, uploading doesn't seem to be working at the moment)