Review: Forbidden Forest (Legends of Regia #1) by Tenaya Jayne @TenayaJayne

Tags

forbidden forest, indie, indie published, paranormal romance, shifters, tenaya jayne, vampires, werewolves

Born in shame. Cast from society. Shape Shifter/Elf hybrid, Forest must fight for any respect she can get. Targeted in her youth by a vampire noble who placed an illegal slave mark on her, she is forced to obey him, no matter what.

Slipping the grip of her master and abandoning the prejudice of Regia, her native world, Forest takes a job on Earth, guarding the portal, using her skills as a warrior to enforce Regia’s laws. Now, called home for a black ops mission, Forest must put aside her own prejudice to transport the vampire prince, Syrus, through enemy territory in a time of war.

Prince Syrus, mage and master of the Blood Kata, wants Forest more than he’s ever wanted anything. In spite of their mutual mistrust, their attraction cannot be denied. Through the danger of their mission, and the secrets they both keep, it doesn’t matter what they feel. Forest is forbidden.

 Blurb and cover from Goodreads

5 out of 5 stars

And we have another winner! Another book that basically made me useless to the world and emotionally traumatized my little readerly heart. Highest marks to the author.

The plot:

One of my absolute favorite things about indie books is that I’ve noticed that they tend to be more “to the point.” There’s none of this big, looping, long, boring string of Stuff before you get to the good parts. (No offense to traditional, some of my favorites are traditional.) Anyway, this book was action packed, romance packed, suspense packed, just over all packed.

One thing that did bother me was the omniscient perspective. There were parts where perspective was swapped through the course of a scene and I felt like it should have been more consistent or maybe broken up to make it clear who was talking.

The characters:

Syrus and Forest are simultaneously adorable, hot, and hilarious together. Their banter and Syrus’ enthusiasm for human paraphernalia were so cute and I love the idea of the big bad vampire prince scrounging the pantry for Froot Loops, that’s not something you hear about every day.

I liked how their relationship was equal—there wasn’t one dominating the other. A lot of times—particularly in vampire romance—there’s the alpha male stuff. It’s fine every now and again, but it was refreshing to have a vampire love interest who’s a master in martial arts and also lovingly tells his girl what a bad@$$ she is.

There is a laundry list of characters who need to have an unfortunate meeting with Buffy or perhaps the Winchester boys in a back alley—Leith, Philippe, Christiana, Zephyre, it goes on—so there will be plenty of baddies to get their just desserts come the next books.

I very much want the next book, it’s just a matter of how soon I can get it. And the book after that. And the prequel novella. Really, I just want them all.

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Friday Freebie #32 Daughter of the Red Dawn (The Lost Kingdom of Fallada #1) by Alicia Michaels

Tags

alicia michaels, epic fantasy, fantasy, friday freebie, lost kingdom of fallada, paranormal romance, romance, werewolves, ya, young adult

This book is an excellent lower YA fantasy with hints of romance. My 5-star review is forthcoming.

These are dark times in the land of Fallada, and I fear that they will only continue to grow darker. Only the return of those we’ve lost will even the score.
It will begin with first line of the prophecy, which foretells of a red sun over the desert sky…
–Adrah, Queen of the Fae

On the outside, seventeen year-old Selena McKinley is like any other teenage girl. Yet Selena has always felt as if she doesn’t belong and is counting the days to graduation and her freedom from the small town that makes her feel so out of place, when the arrival of a stranger turns her world upside down. Selena will learn just how different she is and the truth of where she comes from.
A lost princess, they call her, the catalyst for a war involving a world that Selena was taken from as a child. An evil queen obsessed with her own beauty with a plan to enslave the human race.…the notion seems so silly, yet Selena knows in her heart that it is true. Then there is Titus, the shape shifter whose blue eyes and claims of destiny hold her heart captive. Can Selena find the strength to do what she must while following her heart?

Blurb and cover from Goodreads

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The Natural Predator of the Vampire

Tags

bram stoker, mythology, natural predator, rules, Vampire, vampire lore, werewolves

Assuming the vampire is the natural predator of the human, what is the natural predator of the vampire?

I asked this question awhile back on my Facebook page and got a wide variety of responses. Werewolves and witches were the most popular choices, Buffy was in there somewhere, one person even suggested killer owls, and a few put forth dhampirs, vampire/human hybrids, that only feed off vampire blood (that was probably my favorite).

Bram Stoker to Stephanie Meyer—one of the most common consensus among writers of vampire literature is that they do not get along with werewolves. They’re like Tolkien’s Elves and Dwarves—they hate each others guts into oblivion—but they seem too evenly matched to me. A true predator has a distinctive advantage over their prey. One might say the Werewolves have the edge of going out in the sunlight, but they are at their strongest under a full moon and there goes that idea.

I confess to never having read Dracula, but I’ve been told Stoker put forth the theory that vampires are hunted by witches. This leaves too many variables for me. You need to explain whether or not the witches in question are a separate species or a special classification of human and if they actually feed off the vampires or just use them in spells…I think this makes them more of just an enemy.

Buffy doesn’t count because she is a single human, not a race. (Though I’m sure lots of vampires would have nightmares about her.) As for killer owls—holy crap if there was an owl that ate vampires, I’d never sleep again.

A dhampir is probably the closest to what I had in mind. There is a certain irony in a half human creature feeding off vampires and if you go by the general philosophy on dhampirs, they possess all the strengths of the vampire and none of the weaknesses (sunlight, silver, wooden stakes, crosses, garlic, what have you). Marvel Comic’s Blade went with this theory.

Tied with the dhampir in my personal opinion, is a creature that feeds not on the vampire’s blood, but their life force. I’m not really sure what it would be called or what its vulnerabilities would be, but I imagine it in human form with preternatural strength just like its prey.

Vampire lore has been rehashed and retold of late more than any other mythological creature’s with the exception of perhaps fey. Because of that, there are a multitude of versions of vampires and therefore a multitude of possible predators. This question could be answered twenty different ways by twenty different people and they could all be right. It’s all subjective to the particular incarnation of the lore. Nonetheless, it seems there should be a rule about this because after all, everything in nature gets hunted by something. Why would the paranormal world be any different? This might just be something to address in my Fanged Princess series…

Review: Into the Darkness (The Night Gives Up Its Secrets Trilogy, #2) by Mary Eason

Tags

book review, indie author, indies, mary easy, novella, paranormal romance, vampires, werewolves

The lines are drawn. Sides chosen. The battle for good or evil looms. And caught in the middle of this timeless war, is Jessie Seville and Prince Viktor Brincoveanu. After hundreds of years of darkness, they’ve been reunited once more. Their love has proven strong enough to withstand the Curse of the Lamia, countless years of solitude, and even death. But will they be willing to die for each other?

Blurb and cover from Goodreads

4 out of 5 stars

Remember how I said that I went and downloaded this one after reading the first? Well, I actually enjoyed this one more than its predecessor. It wasn’t as spicy and had more of the tenderness between Gabrielle’ and Viktor.

I did get so mad about Jessie’s dad and that dotty old bat of a UT professor who thought they knew everything and were going to fix everything and only succeeded in screwing up everything. They both made my “hit-in-face-with-Encyclopedia-Britannica-if-chance-ever-arises” list. I know they were only trying to do what was best, but they didn’t even think to talk to Jessie about it? They just decided to make a twenty-two-year-old woman’s decisions for her? Not cool.

The ending to this book sucked. I mean, it was well-written, I just hated it. HEA is my best friend and the world is lucky there is another book in this series, or else I would be seriously upset.

I heard that the third and final book in this series comes out this autumn, so that’s another one I will be watching for! Like the first book, I recommend this to fans of New Adult paranormal romance and vampire romance.

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Monster Makeover

Tags

aliens, demons, dragon, fallen angels, makeover, merfolk, nice, vampires, werewolves, zombies

I was thinking and I realized that most of the monsters and mythical creatures formerly considered to be inherently evil, have recently undergone a change of image, mostly due to writers looking to do things that hadn’t been done before. Some of them I can understand, others I never would’ve guessed.

Dragons

Just take a look at the story of St. George or the Norse Fafnir—dragons used to be bad. Period. Feasting on maidens, hoarding gold, and incinerating brave young knights used to be routine for your average reptilian fiend. But with the rise in fantasy writing, dragons have become more reasonable and in some cases, even docile.

Vampires

Way back when, if you got turned into a vamp, you got turned wicked. You’d start feeding on the innocent and corrupting them in every way, wreaking havoc until some obliging Van Helsing put a stick through your chest. However, thanks to Angel and Edward Cullen, being a vampire is now socially acceptable. Heck, there are people who would sell their souls to get fangs.

Merfolk

According to tradition, mermaids were always dangerous, lurking the in water, awaiting some hapless soul to drown. But over the last century, mermaids have changed their public appearance, doing helpful things like rescuing drowning princes and locating silver chalices for pirates in the Caribbean.

Fallen Angels

This is one of the more surprising ones. Fallen angels are, by definition, fallen and therefore not good. But lately there has been an upsurge in various paranormal romances in which the love interest is a disgraced member of the heavenly host.

Werewolves

Like vampires, werewolves were formerly labeled as 100% awful. However, Sam Roth of Shiver and Munroe from Grimm are certainly lovable specimens of their kind.

Zombies

Now here is one I honestly never thought I’d see change. Under what circumstances does a rotting corpse with a fetish for brain-eating become a good guy? Nonetheless, if books like Warm Bodies are any indication, even the zombie can switch sides.

Aliens

Once upon a time, aliens only came to our little piece of the universe to pillage and plunder our resources or enslave humanity. Nowadays, they can be more humanitarian. The Vesturions from A.M. Hargrove’s Guardians of Vesturon series being among my favorite examples. (You gotta love good-looking, honorable, monotheistic, chaste aliens in black leather, don’t you? Okay, so some people might not think all that is hot, but I really do. I’ve said before that I’m weird, right?)

Can you think of any other “monsters” that have undergone makeovers? Which is your favorite? Do you disagree with them turning nice?

Fanged Mania #4 Ties to the Blood Moon Teaser

Tags

alaska, Fanged mania, paranormal romance, robin p waldrop, ties to the blood moon, vampires, werewolves, ya

To join in, copy and paste these rules and the above banner into your Fanged Mania post and add your link to this week’s Fanged Mania post at Elisabeth Wheatley’s Blog. Fanged Mania is a Friday meme counting down to the release of Fanged Princess and displaying all things vampire and awesome. Fanged Mania posts can be a review of a vampire book, a quote from the latest Vampire Diaries episode, a showcase of a cool vampire book’s cover, or whatever you like so long as it is vampire related. Don’t forget, participants will be entered in the drawing to win a fanged-abulous prize pack!

Today I’d like to share with you guys a teaser from a book I recently read that has a good dose of vampires in it, Ties to the Blood Moon by Robin P. Waldrop. You guys know the drill, click the cover to check it out on Goodreads!

Genevieve is a teenage girl who moves in with her aunt in Alaska after the death of her mother. Soon after her arrival she learns the things she was raised to believe only existed in fairytales are in fact a big part of her history. When it gets to be too much she seeks refuge in the arms of her new boyfriend, William, only to find out he’s not who she thought he was either.

Teaser:

“Luna? Where have you been?” I asked, and then my anger took over. “I almost got killed looking for you. Some kind of giant wolf-like…beast almost had me for dinner.”

Post your thoughts and the links to your Fanged Mania posts below!