Friday Finds

Hosted by Miz B @ Should be Reading


I "found" this over at Crystal Marie Green's blog today. This book is Red Hot Fury, written by Kasey MacKenzie. This cover is pretty smokin'. Not only do we get a cover, but if you go here, you get to read an excerpt of the first chapter. It's pretty good. 2009 and 2010 are pretty good years for debut authors (for my tastes anyway.) Red Hot Fury comes out June 29, 2010. Sounds like a birthday gift card buy for me.

Crystal Marie Green also has another (aka Chris Marie Green) Vampire Babylon novel, Deep In The Woods coming up. You can read an excerpt of it over here. I read the first book, loved it and bought the second. When I moved last year, a lot of my books were packed, not all together, unfortunately, so I haven't been able to find it to finish reading it. So now I see that I'm going to be four books behind in this series. I can't believe I got so far behind in it. {I feel a list coming on...}

Book 1 Night Rising (read, liked very much)

Book 2 Midnight Reign (started, packed, not found yet)

Book 3 Break of Dawn (need)

Book 4 A Drop of Red (need)

Book 5 The Path of Razors (need)

Book 6 Deep in the Woods (March 2, 2010)

Short Story in an anthology called First Blood- between #3 & #4.

Soon, I'm going to play catch up with series books that I like a lot, but for one reason or another haven't stayed up to date on. Chris Marie Green's Vampire Babylon series will be top of the list. I just hope I'm able to find that second book before I end up having to buy it again. Deep In The Woods goes on sale March 2, 2010. Chrystal Green also writes romances.

Also coming up is The Darkest Edge of Dawn, August 2010. But Kelly Gay has posted her new cover for it, and I think it captures her main character's personality so well. Badass, take no prisoners and look at her arm muscles - wow. Charlie is intense! This sequel {to The Better Part of Darkness} is a novel I'm really looking forward to.

The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay

The Better Part of Darkness

******

Kelly Gay

ARC won from contest

Either I'm getting way better at picking out books I want to read, or there are a lot of great debut novels with good writing and dialogue in the bookstores today. This is one of those books that I was waiting to get, wanting to get very badly, I was lucky and won it. I'm so glad I received this book. It's worth buying, worth reading and worth looking for the sequel.

The main character, Charlie (Charlene) Madigan is a detective with the Atlanta P.D.'s Integration Task Force. She's also a divorced mother of a young "tween" (Emma). The Atlanta P.D needs the Integration Task Force (ITF) to deal with the new citizens of the world. "Offworlders" from Charbydon (similar to the biblical Hell) and Elysia (similar to Heaven) - two dimensions recently discovered by a scientist- have settled in Atlanta and with the new citizens come new paranormal crimes. Charlie's partner, Hank, is a siren as well as a good friend of the family.

The secondary characters in this book are interesting supporting characters. There is Charlie's sister, Bryn, who practices magic; her daughter Emma; her ex-husband Will (that's my youngest son's name- a good all-round name) who is fightin an addiction that helped to end their marraige,;and her boss, the chief- Chief Abernathy. Throughout the book he's mainly referred to as the chief, if his first name was mentioned I don't recall it right now, and somehow that works for me.

Besides being a cop working with paranomals, Charlie seems to have some sort of edge herself. She was recently killed and brought back to life with some extra abilities and nightmares. This is a help as well as a hindrance to her.

The plot of the book starts with the recent introduciton of a new deadly drug, an off-world narcotic (ash). Charlie and Hank investigate this and soon find Charlie's family in danger. There are important people involved and soon Charlie is being accused of murder. Bad things happen to people Charlie cares about, and her reactions are amazing to behold. I loved her reactions - from the rage, to the cold determination to her utter breakdown in emotions. Through it all, she never gives up and in fact finally realizes that she has to learn how to work with the extras she came back to life with.

The more I read of this book, the further I got into, the more I enjoyed myself. Charlie's reactions were totally believable and she is a strong woman who can lose her temper, fall into a rage, and yet doesn't come across as totally cranky and angry or abusive to everyone she comes across - she has her moments, but her character is likeable. Charlie also learns more about the off-worlders than she knew before and isn't too stubborn to admit there's more to learn.

The dialogue was also very good. I love reading a book when the dialogue fits the character's personalities. Good dialogue helps a book along, bad dialogue just can bring the whole thing to a screeching halt for me. Thankfully this is an example of great dialogue fitting in with a great origianl plot and great narration.

And the ending? chills.

If you get this book (and you should) enjoy not only the supporting cast already mentioned, but the supporting characters introduced throughout the book. A lot of interesting characters, most of whom I hope to see in future books. Books like The Darkest Edge of Dawn, which according to Amazon.fail is the second Charlie Madigan book and releases in August 2010.

Reading Challenges that I'm applying this book toward:

• Speculative Fiction Reading Challenge
• 2010 Countdown Challenge

because of the word "darkness" I considered using it for the Colorful Reading Challenge, but that would be just down-right cheating! Darkness wouldn't really be a color, right? :)

Contest for Better Part of Darkness

One of the books I'd love to get is called The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay (who also will be releasing a YA book under the name Kelly Keaton). There is a contest running until 12-19-09 for an ARC of The Better Part of Darkness over at Sara's Urban Fantasy Blog. Go over and check it out along with the interview that Sara did with Kelly Gay.