Kerry Allen

Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night by Kresley Cole
Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages
ISBN-13: 9781416547037 
Available Now
Retail Price $6.99
Third in the Immortals after Dark Series

There are two kinds of paranormal romances: heavy and light (and I’m not referring to net weight—page count isn’t necessarily indicative of heft). I’m going to use a cake analogy here, because I figure everybody can relate to cake. (Diabetics, my soul weeps for you.)

On the heavy side, you have your chocolate torte, a dense cake steeped in liqueur, layered with gooey fudge filling and covered with a thick layer of ganache. It’s very rich, a special treat you don’t get very often, and scarfing it down borders on sacrilege, so you take your time and linger over every bite.

On the light side, you have your devil’s food cupcake, from box mix to oven to stomach in half an hour, slathered with pink Funfetti frosting and sprinkles. Tasty, plentiful, and readily available any day of the week, so you’re free to inhale it and go back for more.

They’re both good, both satisfying in their way, just a different level of intensity.

(Since I already got an email, let me make this absolutely, positively clear: I am not in any way deriding cupcakes. I love cupcakes. I WRITE cupcakes, for crying out loud. Cupcakes rule.)

Kresley Cole is a paranormal cupcake. Her books contain the violence and broad cast of characters and expansive mythology and hot-hot-sexy that you’ll find in a heavier paranormal, but she delivers them with a quick pace, an abundance of snappy dialogue, and a good dose of humor that makes the story fly by.

The Ingredients

The Hie: A big supernatural scavenger hunt, the winner of which receives a key that will allow him to go back in time, twice, and alter events that didn’t work out the way he wanted the first time around. (Readers of No Rest for the Wicked saw the same contest from the perspective of Kaderin and Sebastian.)

The Hero: Bowen MacRieve, 1200-year-old werewolf, who wants that key to go back about 200 years and prevent the death of his mate, for without his one true love, life has no meaning and he might as well just die. (Yeah, he’s the one who got blown all to hell in NRftW.)

The Heroine: Mariketa the Awaited, 23-year-old witch with heaps of witchy potential that has yet to manifest in any fashion that makes all the awaiting worthwhile, who joined the contest for something do while she’s awaiting her transition to immortality and the awakening of her fantabulous powers.

Combine the first three ingredients. Bowe and Mari are vying for the prize hidden in some Mayan ruins when they get distracted by their mutual hotness. Bowe has been celibate since the death of his mate, and combined with his deep distrust of witches, he believes Mari has worked some magic on him to make him behave like a horny dog so she can eliminate the competition. In keeping with the spirit of the Hie, he drops a few tons of rock over the only escape route, entombing her so he has a head start toward his certain victory. Right before he does so, however, Mari manages to zap him with a spell that nullifies his immortality. She figures as soon as he realizes his boo-boos aren’t healing, he’ll return directly to let her out so she can undo the hex.

(In all fairness to Bowe, it is a dirty competition, Mari shot off her mouth about her super witchy powers, so he thought she’d eventually get out, and he also thought she was immortal already, so nothing really tragic could befall her in the meantime. He didn’t realize he was being that much of an asshole when he did it.)

Turn up the heat. Those who read NRftW know Sebastian won the Hie, so Bowe obviously isn’t getting his dead girlfriend back as planned. He’s also not in real great shape by the time he loses. He’s taken back to the family kennel to recover, at which time he learns Mari never came back. She’s been missing for three weeks, and her friends are pissed—throwing-cars-around, shooting-lightning-everywhere, major-immortal-war-on-your-hands pissed. He has until the end of the week to bring her back, or all hell is going to break loose.

Needless to say, Mari’s not real pleased to see her “rescuer,” literally goes for his throat, and discovers she can harness her power just fine when it’s directed toward smacking him around. She’d just as soon kill his mangy ass, but since she’s still mortal and they’re in the middle of a jungle where the guerillas and the drug cartels and all those other gun-happy folks are tearing the place up with bullets, she’s going to need his protection to get back to civilization in one piece.

Now, some well-meaning soul has suggested to Bowe that his persistent mineminemine matematemate thing could mean Mari is the reincarnation of his dead fiancee, and he’s willing to entertain the possibility, especially the sexsexsex part. If he can knock her up, it will prove she’s his mate, and if not, he can enjoy her in the meantime, then go win the next Hie and dig up the dead girlfriend.

Being the smooth operator he is, Bowe tells Mari all this. Well, what girl wouldn’t be flattered to be the guinea pig in this experiment? Shoot out puppies because destiny says you have to, or serve as a substitute until he has the opportunity to dump you and go fetch the real thing? Mari’s not real pleased with either option (good for her). She echoes my own sentiments about the whole “soulmate” thing: she wants to be loved and protected and lusted after not because of some internal werewolf memo saying that’s the way it is, but because he gets to know her and likes her and CHOOSES her. Without him constantly pining for a dead woman would be a plus, too.

Bowe could benefit from learning (a) honesty is not always the best policy, and (b) the strong, silent type gets a lot of action for a reason. He has terminal foot-in-mouth, so by the time he has a change of heart, he’s screwed things so thoroughly, Mari’s not buying his heartfelt declarations.

Stick a fork in it. Why doesn’t the constant one-step-forward, two-steps-back in the relationship make me want to scream like it usually does? I don’t know, extenuating circumstances that don’t feel completely contrived solely to frustrate the reader? The fact that I like Bowe (tough guy completely at a loss when it comes to winning over the woman he loves) and Mari (strong, liberated, and, dare I say, feisty) enough to put with a lot of crap I otherwise wouldn’t? Plain ol’ fun?

Whatever. It works. A lot of deep introspection to determine the allure seems out of proportion to the book. It’s not going to strain your brain, but it’s an enjoyable way to pass a couple of hours. (It made baking countless dozens of oatmeal-apple cookies pass much more quickly.) I’d call it “a fun romp,” or, back to the (horrendously lame) cake analogy, “a tasty treat.”

Who cares about the nutritional information: Again, people are squicked out about the age difference between hero and heroine, which has never bothered me in a paranormal because:

1. It has been scientifically proven that boys mature less quickly than girls. After a thousand years or so, he might actually be on par with a 20-something female.

2. The Ick Factor with vast age differences in real-life relationships, for me, has a great deal to do with the older party’s shriveled, sagging, and decaying appearance. Who truly wants to get intimate with their grandma’s contemporaries? There pretty much has to be a financial motivation or a psychological issue driving that pairing, which is more disturbing than any disparity in experience. In a paranormal romance, even if a character is 10,000 years old, he’s usually been preserved in peak physical condition, so an attraction is believable.

3. In this case particularly, the younger party isn’t some wilting violet who’s going to be blown away by the elder’s great wisdom. Mari even rags on Bowe for being an old man. And he can’t play the wisdom card on her because by the end of the book, she knows every-frickin’-thing. She’s also powerful in other ways (sexually, magically), enough to measure up to him despite her dearth of chronological years.

Unless the ancient one is perpetually treating the young one like an infant (occasional teasing is acceptable), which I don’t recall ever encountering, the age difference isn’t an issue for me at all.

I want Rydstrom’s story. I like him a lot. But the bad-boy vampire next in the series will tide me over nicely. *sigh* Why do I like the nasty ones so much? They go straight to my hips… Oh yeah, that’s why! *snicker*

The first time I saw the cover, I wanted the guy’s coat, but I thought the art looked a little comic bookish. It looks a lot better in person, finer detail or… something. (The visual-perception sphere isn’t really my forte.) And hello—meet every guy I had a crush on prior to the age of 25. (That shaggy goth thing still trips my trigger, but it’s now harder to find it on a guy who isn’t jailbait. I think the cutoff of acceptability is somewhere around 35, anyway. After that, I expect a guy to get a haircut to demonstrate he’s a Responsible Adult. *swoon*Trent*sigh*)

Demon Moon by Meljean Brook
Mass Market Paperback, 470 pages
ISBN-13: 9780425215760
Available Now
Retail Price $7.99
Second in The Guardians series (Does the series have a name yet? Ha! Ask and ye shall receive!)

I read this book about 2 months ago.  Why is it taking me so long to post this lovefest? It has a lot to do with being unable to skip through it on the re-read and pick out the highlights. I was compelled to re-read every single word because:

1. If you don’t pay attention, you will get lost.

2. At no point did I think, I’m bored, time to skip the rest of this page, because in 470 pages, there isn’t a single wasted word.

3. Colin demands long, lingering stretches of undivided attention.

There’s a huge story here. To keep my squeeing under 20,000 words, I’m going to focus on Colin and Savi and not so much on the Grand Scheme.

After all the elder vampires in San Fran were wiped out by the nosferatu (the ugly, more powerful variety of bloodsuckers) in Demon Angel, leaving the younger generation leaderless, unorganized, and ripe for manipulation, Colin Ames-Beaumont is now the oldest and most powerful (and, it must be said, best looking) vampire in town. The younger vamps want him to step in to fill the vacant leadership position. However, Colin is a solitary creature (to paraphrase Ambrose Bierce, alone = in good company), self-absorbed and uninterested in leading a flock of fanged sheep. His philosophy is: “They should look and admire; they shouldn’t expect anything in return.” He is unlike them in ways they can’t possibly comprehend, and he’s not thrilled they’ve been stalking him and noting his recent preference for a certain “type” in his beverage selection.

Savitri Murray (aka the object of Colin’s obsession) is on a transatlantic flight with a nosferatu occupying one of the other seats and suspects she may soon be plummeting to her death along with the other 400 passengers.  She emails Colin to apprise him of the situation, and though assistance is promised, there’s no time to wait for it to arrive. Armed with only a vial of hellhound venom and the guts of her laptop, she kills the nosferatu, ingesting some of its blood and the venom in the process, which makes her terribly ill and has long-lasting side effects.

Colin has been unable to taste anything for the past 200 years, so he gets, um, excited when that’s not the case with Savi post-contamination. There are a number of obstacles preventing him from getting what he wants, though:

1. Mutual friends will eviscerate him.

2. Savi promised her very traditional granny she’d marry a nice boy who would take care of her, and she made that promise in earnest.

3. Vamp feeding and sex usually go hand in hand, and one human can’t sustain a vamp for long—in other words, Colin would have to starve to death in order to be faithful to Savi.

4. Colin can’t turn Savi into a vampire because his blood has killed everyone who’s tasted it. If she had someone else turn her, Colin could feed from her, but she still couldn’t feed from him because he’s toxic, so she’d have to dine elsewhere, and again with the fidelity issue…

5. Not to mention, no one’s sure what vamp blood on top of hellhound venom and nosferatu juice would do to her.

Well, doesn’t that just suck? (No pun intended.) Savi thinks so, too, so she proposes they spend one month together—she can put off her nuptials that long, he can keep his fangs out of other women that long, and the bloodthirsty friends will just have to deal.

At this point, tears were jerked. Because a month isn’t going to be enough, but there is no solution to these obstacles. (Seriously. It hasn’t all been a big misunderstanding. There’s no fortuitous discovery of fine print that changes everything. Their love is well and truly doomed.) Nobody plays it cool (i.e. acting like the typical tough guy) at this point—they’re both completely open with the I love you and the I don’t know how I’ll live without you and the damn this cursed fate stuff.

What is there to do when you’re doomed, other than say Fuck it and risk whatever interminable stretch of miserable life you have left on an astronomically slim chance at happiness? (It’s far more eloquent and romantic in the book, but I’m all sentimented out at this point. It’s an emotionally exhausting story, and I mean that in the best possible way.)

Why I like love Colin: Colin gets his own HOTM spread on November 2. For now, suffice it to say I adore the vain little bloodsucker.

Why I like Savi: She’s smart and resourceful, fearless and curious, always questioning. She doesn’t torture herself with grudges and regrets. Very much a modern girl herself, she honors her granny’s traditional values. And she smiles while her heart is being ripped out and chewed to bits because crying doesn’t make anything better, so what’s the point of it?

Even as herocentric as I am, I found Savi’s POV just as interesting as Colin’s, which (given my state of infatuation) indicates she’s quite a strong character.

My one gripe is with the cover. Dammit, would it be such a crime to have a woman with short hair on the cover of a romance novel?!

And you betcha I have preordered Demon Night, available February 2008. I wonder what demon dog will destroy while I’m immersed in that one…

Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward
Mass Market Paperback, 502 pages
ISBN: 0451222350
Available Now
Retail Price $7.99
Fifth in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series

(I feel my commentary is superfluous at this point, since the interwebs will do everything but tuck you in and read the book to you for a bedtime story, but being superfluous has never stopped me before, so here goes.)

Vishous is the Brotherhood’s tech expert. He has a glowing hand of death and a pied-a-terre where he ties up his dates and shags ‘em rotten, baby. His sole emotional attachment is to his roomie, Butch—newly wed, newly transformed into a vamp, and dependent on V’s magic hand for a spiritual colonic after he sucks the sludge out the nasty Lessers.

V gets a visit from the Scribe Virgin, who reveals the identity of his heretofore unknown mama and lays the future of the Brotherhood on his grudging shoulders. She wants a Brother to come to Virginland and knock up all forty of the Chosen to ensure another generation of warriors. Since his life is in the shitter and there’s nothing for him in this world, V agrees to be the prize stud. Ensuring the survival of his race is a reason to live, at least.

In a pissy mood after the SV’s visit, he goes out hunting Lessers on his own, drops his guard, and gets shot in the heart.

Dr. Jane is an ambitious trauma surgeon who intends to leave behind her nonexistent social life, her joyless apartment, and her go-nowhere job to head up her own department elsewhere. A freak of nature with fangs, an unidentifiable blood type, and a bullet in his six-chambered heart ends up under her knife. She’s so excited about the latter, I was a little surprised she didn’t dissect him on the spot, but she’s a good doc and patches up all his boo-boos instead, saving his miserable life.

V wakes up while Jane’s boss is propositioning her across his hospital bed, and his first thought is “Mine… And if you touch her, I’m going to bite your godforsaken arm off at the socket.” Possessive bunch, the Brothers, so when his homies come to retrieve him before the humans figure out what he is and V says he’s not leaving without his doc, Hollywood slings her over his shoulder and hauls her back to the compound. King Wrath wants her removed immediately but is persuaded V needs continued medical attention that only she can provide because Havers is such a bitch.

Jane feels a duty to her patient, but she’s pissed about being abducted and arms herself and gets mouthy with V, who has dominance issues and thinks she needs to be taught a lesson about obedience—a naked, sweaty, Richter-triggering lesson unlike anything either of them has experienced before.

The need to take care of Jane is foreign to V, as is the desire to give her something of himself. The dude recognizes the symptoms of falling in love, having watched almost every dude around him succumb to the same malady within the past couple of months.

Too bad he promised to be the Chosen’s whoreboy and can’t keep the love of his life for more than a weekend.

I cannot go on without addressing some of the “issues” raised elsewhere. I’m pretty sure the rest of this is spoiler-free (if you’ve somehow managed to remain unsullied), but just in case, it’s below the fold and just vague enough to confuse you. If you’ve read the book, you’ll understand my vague references just fine.

See the rest of “Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward (Let’s try this again…)”

Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward
Mass Market Paperback, 502 pages
ISBN: 0451222350
Available Now
Retail Price $7.99
Fifth in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series

I read this last week. It was, as BDB books always are, an engrossing, unputdownable read.

Here’s my problem with writing a “review” of the book I read: Lots of people were able to get hold of it a week before anyone would sell it to me and burned up the internets with their negative reactions to it, so I had those issues in mind when I read.

Did this poison my reaction to the book? No. What it did was pull me out of the story frequently with thoughts along the lines of “What the hell book did you people read?”

V’s thing with Butch was dismissed too easily? Half the damn book is about V struggling with it, talking about it with Butch, and Butch himself explained the source of it (the same way I always thought of it, incidentally). Some people just weren’t going to be happy unless they fucked, though.

Too much of the secondary characters? Without Phury, V would never have been free to be with Jane. Developing his reasoning for saving the day was oodles better than having him pop into Wrath’s office out of nowhere and offer to save the day.

All the secondary stuff? It’s called worldbuilding. You can’t clamor for it one minute and then bitch because there’s a world other than the H/H the next. Well, obviously you can, but it makes you look like an asshat.

Missing the lessers? (Too much secondary stuff, but missing the lessers? **headdesk**) Also explained. Laying low for a couple weeks while seeking to fill the vacant middle management position. They had no story to tell during the handful of days during which this story takes place.

The average romance novel is 300 to 350 pages in length. I haven’t counted and have no intention of doing so (though you’re welcome to take up the challenge), but I’m fairly confident V and Jane accounted for at least 300 pages. The extra 200 pages is bonus content, as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, the hue and cry over what happened to Jane! (And I am neither going to tell you flat out nor use a cutesie euphemism that is as subtle as telling you flat out. You can find that all over the place.) She was clumsy at first because she was adjusting to an altered state of being. She adjusted well enough that she proceeded with plans to be the Brotherhood’s live-in surgeon, and it never in any way affected V’s interaction with her, so what the hell is the problem? Together + Happy = HEA.

What I wrote was, I kid you not, a 10,000-word rebuttal of practically every negative comment I’d read in the past week (exceptions: Cormia actually is as much of a dishrag as Marissa, and while I have no problem with detailing John’s journey, I could have lived without watching him jerk off), complete with quotes and page numbers and foaming at the mouth with hostility.

(Oh, you think what we have here is hostile? Silly rabbit, this bitchfest is for kids.)

My reaction is not not because I’m a squeeing fangrrl and think J.R. Ward can do no wrong. (The spelling. My god, the spelling. It’s bad enough stumbling across a word in the text, but the glossary is downright painful to behold.) My reaction is the same as it always is when people disseminate misinformation to an unsuspecting public—pissed off.

I’m going to have to come back to this one when I cool off enough to actually write about the book, but it was important to me to show some support. It’s a good story about a damaged hero soothed by the love of a good woman and lots of sex that will make you wish a hot vampire would tie you up and spank you.

Hollywood’s still my favorite, but this one beat the crap out of Butch’s book.

The Dream Thief by Shana Abe
Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN: 0553588052
Available Now
Retail Price $6.99
Second in series

This book and its predecessor, The Smoke Thief, are so beautiful, I don’t know where to begin singing the praise. On second thought, maybe my singing (reminiscent of a dying cat’s caterwauling) isn’t the greatest way to praise something, so I’ll stick with the written word.

Zane is the only human allowed to move in the world of the drakon. He knows their secrets, which would earn him a death sentence if his talent as a thief wasn’t so useful to them. They enlist him to find a very special diamond. If he can do it with the scant information provided, he will receive a sum that will allow him to live like a king the rest of his days.

Lia, one of the drakon, has heard the diamond’s song all her life. For almost as long, she has had troubling dreams of the future. One thing in the dreams never changes: She and Zane are lovers.

Aside from his mental hangup (he’s a street kid, a criminal, not good enough for the beautiful princess), Zane has a more concrete reason to keep his hands off Lia: not only will the drakon kill him, they’ll kill her. (Kind of a harsh, inflexible bunch, the drakon.) However, he needs her to find the diamond. He could endure the forced proximity along the journey. He could resist his own desire. But when she offers herself freely, what’s a thief to do other than take what he can get?

When the stone’s secret is revealed to Zane, he realizes he could have everything he’s ever wanted, including Lia, and her nightmarish visions of the future threaten to become reality.

What I love about Zane: He’s a thief. He acts like a thief. He thinks like a thief. When presented with an opportunity to acquire wealth and power, the first thing he does is envision himself with wealth and power. Consequences and morality are a secondary and iffy consideration.

(I can’t stand a character who always, always, always does the good and noble and right thing and never even considers the bad one. Boring. As. Hell. Not to mention completely unrealistic. Everything you need to know about good characterization can be learned through the study of DBZ: Goku got killed five hundred times for a good reason. Gohan was a dork. Snarky little Trunks was way cooler than big mama’s boy Trunks. And Vegeta, who never made a move, bad or good, without first evaluating what was in it for him, made the whole thing worth watching. “Will he? Won’t he? He did what? What a bastard! Yay, it was a ruse! Nope, he really is a bastard. Aw, but look, now he’s redeeming himself…”)

What I love about Lia: She had no qualms about breaking rules that got in the way of what needed to be done, which nicely narrowed the gap between Spoiled Rich Girls and the Criminals They Love. She consistently took action. She went after the diamond, and she went after Zane, and there was no question either would elude her.

Typically for me, I was far more interested in the hero (I like men, what can I say…), but I felt Zane was well matched in Lia. She understands and accepts him, bounty on his head and all, and will be tough enough to stick with him when the excrement hits the ventilation device back home.

Book Three in the series, starring Lia’s brother and the drakon princess who doesn’t know her future has been decided for her (and boy, will she be pissed when she finds out), will definitely be a must-read-immediately (even if I wasn’t thrilled with the cover, which breaks the theme I’ve really liked in the first two).

Demon Angel by Meljean Brook
Mass Market Paperback, 432 pages
ISBN: 0425213471
Available Now
Retail Price $7.99

I was so engrossed in this book, when blurry vision forced me to take a break (rapt, unblinking reading + contact lenses = blindness), I discovered that demon dog had ripped the shit out of the sofa cushion three inches away from my ass in an attempt to dig a bone out of the crack (I’m not going to go there—I’m just not), and I’d been blissfully unaware of the rending cloth and flying clumps of foam.

Sir Pup? Pfft. Not half the hellhound my cocker spaniel is.

Ms. Brook, for rendering me oblivious, you will be receiving the bill for my slipcovers. (Yes, plural. The loveseat has to match. We may be white trash, but we are not barbarians.)

The guts of it: There are two parts to this story, before and after The Fall.

Before, Lilith (a demon) amuses herself by toying with boy hero Hugh, who is all the more amusing because he plays along, knowing he’s being played. She’s not in an attractive guise (Hugh likens her face to that of a cow), and she is clearly a woman of low virtue (shamelessly admitting to dallying with a tied up, naked man and attempting to seduce poor, innocent Hugh) and a troublemaker (her lies, ostensibly to keep him out of trouble, create worse problems for him than the truth would have), but Hugh enjoys her company. Even after he learns Lilith is a demon, he seeks her out because she’s such a sparkling conversationalist.

Her lies bite Hugh in the ass in a big way, and he’s saved from death by being made a Guardian (angel-like being). For the next 800 years, Hugh and Lilith continue their verbal sparring, working together and against each other as the situation dictates, enemies by nature who happen to like one another.

Then Hugh does a thing or two to so badly damage his sense of honor, he chooses to Fall—giving up his Guardian role to become human again.

After, Lilith has become, of all things, an FBI agent—only natural, considering the number of demons in law enforcement and politics (which explains a lot, really). The city is overrun by nosferatu (ugly, uncivilized bloodsuckers) who have entered a union with Lucifer that involves destroying Hugh, for reasons that are not readily apparent. He’s human, just one of 5 billion, and it takes some time to figure out why he’s so damn important in Lucifer’s scheme.

That time is filled with lots of violence, demon sex, family dysfunction, declarations of love that always was, Cerberus’s balls, and a vampire whose vanity exceeds even Lestat’s, not necessarily in that order.

The pacing is brilliant, slowly tightening up until the climax, when you feel events spinning out of control right along with the characters.

Why I like Hugh: He is so bloody good natured. How many men do you know who would cooperate while their girlfriend threatened another guy with blackmail by buttsecks, and later joke about her interest in watching him engage in some manlovin’ when she’s not even around? They got along so smashingly for so many years despite what would otherwise have been construed as serious verbal abuse on Lilith’s part because he understood her from the beginning and happily played along.

Understanding is a very attractive thing in a man.

Why I like Lilith: Armored bitch exterior, gooey cream filling (reminds me of someone…).

With an 800-year friendship that’s endured despite lies and bloodshed and mutual murder attempts, you get the feeling this couple can make the relationship last for the rest of their lives.

Demon Moon, Ms. Brook’s next, is being rushed to me as we speak. I do love finding a new autobuy…

Thin Air by Rachel Caine
Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN: 0451461630 
Available Now
Retail Price $6.99
Book Six in the Weather Warden series

The sixth book in a series poses something of a pimping dilemma. I would neverever suggest beginning a series at any point other than Book One. I assume if you’ve already read the first five, you’re not waiting for someone to convince you to buy Book Six, so the goal would seem to be to steer the uninitiated toward Book One… but I’ve just read Book Six and am bursting to share. Hence my dilemma.

Perhaps my unbridled enthusiasm for the series, communicated in my lovefest for Book Six, will be persuasive enough to move you toward the beginning.

Minimal background information: Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden. Wardens tweak weather, fire, and earth to make them less devastating, but it’s a tricky business, since the redirected energy from the tweak has to go somewhere, which can cause devastation of its own. For many, many years, the Wardens made use of enslaved djinn, harnessing the djinns’ power to augment their own. The djinn, during the course of Book Five, became gloriously, catastrophically free, and David, Joanne’s djinn lover, was thrust into the unenviable position of their leader.

I must first confess: I am a David groupie. Total squealing fangirl, a disgrace to upstanding romance readers everywhere (and the Warden books are fantasy, not romance—although the romance is one of the greatest I’ve ever read—so my embarrassing behavior transcends genre boundaries to make you cringe). Would I choose him over Acheron (Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter honcho), whose bitch I am? Yeah. In a Marysue fantasyworld, I would either/or Ash—be his personal naked trampoline or his galpal. I could totally handle being Simi.

David? Hell, no, I do not want to be just friends.

Why the disparity? I’ve seen how David loves, and it is fierce. All-encompassing. Heartbreaking. Five minutes being the object of that kind of passion would tide a girl over for the next hundred years or so.

So at the end of Book the Fifth, when Jo’s memory was wiped and David, in all his inhuman intensity and perfection, scared the hell out of her, I was anxious—and not for Jo. Would she end up turning to Lewis (mentor, friend, and former lover who is comfortingly human), who’s a decent guy, but not so decent he would respect the sanctity of her forgotten love for David if she put the moves on him? That would kill David. He would atomize Lewis first, which would hardly convince Jo he’s not a monster, and then he’d die, heart shattered, and I would cry for a week.

Let me tell you, it’s been a long, cruel wait for the continuation.

The guts of the thing: There’s a demon loose in the world, sucking energy from anything that will feed it. When Jo’s memories were taken, they were flung off in the form of energy and gobbled up by the demon. Now it’s bent on taking over the rest of Jo’s life, and the only obstacle is, well… Jo.

Jo finds herself alone, wanted by the Wardens, wanted by the police, wanted by the press, hunted by a demon who has her face and her memories, and not even David believes she’s herself anymore.

Unfortunately, there’s no federal task force to address this kind of identity theft, so it’s up to Jo to stop her doppelganger from using her power to tear open a portal and invite her demon buddies over to earth to party.

And, more importantly, keep her slimy skank hands off David. (Whaddya mean that’s not more important? Sez you.)

Mercifully, this book did not end on a panic attack-inducing cliffhanger, so I can await Book Seven with a normal level of anticipation.

To pop your Weather Warden cherry, start with Book One, Ill Wind.