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Review: Archangel’s Legion by Nalini Singh

25 Nov

Archangel's Legion

I’ve been on a good book roll these last couple of weeks and that has made me a VERY happy little fan girl. A lot of my favourite authors have released books this month but of all the books that I have read in November, the best one so far is Archangel’s Legion by Nalini Singh. I have made no secret of how much I love this author and her books but I have to say this book may be one of my favourites of hers.
This book is the 6th in NS’s Guild Hunter series. I strongly suggest to anyone who hasn’t read the previous books to please go back and do so as I think it would be difficult to pick up some elements of the story if you start on this book. Besides, the first book ROCKS and you really, really have to read it.
Here’s a quick background anyway for those not familiar with the series: The main characters in most of the books of the series are Raphael and Elena. Raphael is the archangel of New York and one of the biggest, baddest, scariest mo-fos out there by reputation. He has to be as the world they live in is kind of like ours except there are vampires and werewolves and angels (oh my!) walking the streets and each region is ruled by an archangel who has to have the scary control factor thing going or the supernaturals would just go around killing each other and poor hapless humans.
In this very interesting world, vampires are created by the angels. HOW and WHY this is done is one of the more interesting revelations in book 1. Once these vampires are created they have to go into the service of the angel who created them and are only considered free once that contract has expired. If vampires run out on their contracts or do something very naughty they are hunted by members of the Guild. Elena is a Guild Hunter. Not only is she trained by the Guild (I keep picturing a supernatural sort of police academy here. Helloooo Steve Guttenburg) she is a born hunter which means she can track vampires through scent. Anyway, Raphael and Elena meet when Raphael hires a very reluctant Elena to track a rogue archangel for him. In the way of these books, blood, gore, mayhem and near death experiences ensue and by the end of Angel’s Blood, which is book 1 in the series, Elena and Raphael are deeply and life changingly in love. Oh, and Elena becomes an angel. I’m telling you READ ANGEL’S BLOOD. It’s a totally kick ass, tres amaze book.
(Note: it was at this point where I got SO enthused about the first book that I went back and read it AGAIN for the 6th or so time! Then of course I had to keep going all the way again to book 6 so it’s basically taken me over a week just to write this review.)
Fast forward to book 6 and Raphael and Elena have gone through a really tumultuous period of unrest in the world. Elena in particular has grown a lot in terms of being a baby angel and in terms of being a consort to one of the most powerful beings in the world. There is a period of great change called the Cascade and it is signified by all things going wonky such as seas changing colour and unexplained storms etc. Through most of the book Raphael and Elena are dealing with the Cascade, changes with Raphael’s power and a coming war with another archangel/s.
I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but I do have to tell you that there IS a war in the book and it is EPIC. The battle scenes were so exciting and fast paced, and the story was told so descriptively, I could close my eyes and imagine it in my head. The images that were described were so beautiful such as skies full of wings or angels flying in formation that it was almost like having a reel of a really high budget fantasy movie playing in my head as I was reading.
What I really loved about the book though is that in spite of all the action and intrigue and plots, the love story between Raphael and Elena never got lost in the mix. Being really invested in these characters, I loved seeing how their relationship is continuing to evolve from the first book. One of the things that I feel NS is particularly good at is showing what a powerful, beautiful and intimidating creature Raphael is.
He laughed, her dangerous lover who wore his strength as a second skin and had a face of such violent masculine beauty that she was stunned anew each time she realized he belonged to her. Hair of darkest midnight and eyes of a painful blue found nowhere else on this earth, Raphael was a man blooded with power- no one would ever mistake him for anything but what he was: an archangel who had the capacity to snuff out a life as easily as she might crush an ant.
And again further along in the book:
It was a bone-jarring shock to be bluntly reminded that the man who was her lover was that man only for her. To the rest of the world he was-must be- the lethal, dangerous and sometimes cruel Archangel of New York.
And yet, NS saves him from being a cold, completely intimidating character by showing us the core of warmth and good in him through his people’s absolute loyalty to him and through all the wonderful interactions he has with Elena. I loved all the action and imagery of this book, but I adored the interplay between these two characters, especially their conversations mind to mind:
I’ll enter first. I’m the Hunter, Elena reminded him.
Of course you may go first. When I’m dead.
Scowling at that statement delivered in an eminently reasonable tone that fooled her into thinking he was going to agree, she pulled out her crossbow.
Go. We’ll argue about your autocratic tendencies later.
I look forward to it.
There was also a scene where another archangel and his consort were visiting that had to do with skimpy dresses and underwear that made me laugh out loud, and this little conversation about concubines:
Raphael, in case you’re getting ideas- I won’t be this civilized if you decide you need a concubine. In fact, it’s a good bet I’ll turn homicidal.
He didn’t look up from his conversation with Astaad as he said, A pity, in that cool “Archangel” tone of his. I will now have to ask the pilot to empty the hold of my chosen females.
We’re going to have to talk about this new sense of humor of yours.
The contrast between the powerful archangel and the tough as nails hunter and how sweet (because really that is the word for it) they are with each other is simply sigh inducing and is for me, one of the absolute best things about these books. The tender moments in between the action sequences were lovely:
“Eternity would mean nothing without you, For no power on Earth would I trade my Elena.”
Heart splintering at the tenderness of his words, she touched trembling fingers to his lips and hoped this choice wouldn’t doom him, this man whom she loved until she couldn’t breathe.

Just reading that made me sigh again. It’s an A ++ for me all around. I can’t wait for the next instalment in the series.

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My Week in Books…

5 Nov

This week seems to be a week of new releases. I finished Nora Roberts’s Dark Witch and Nalini Singh’s Archangel’s Legion over the weekend. Two of my autobuy authors, one weekend- yay me! I also re-read Danielle Monsch’s Stone Guardian and am currently reading Shannon Stacey’s Snowbound with the CEO.

Of all the above books I have to really, really recommend Archangel’s Legion. It was EPIC. I’m still trying to get my thoughts together so I can write a proper review because really I’m still feeling all gushy and ridiculously in love with the book- it was that good. Unfortunately, writing SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE over and over again does not a good review make so that review is forthcoming once I have come back down to Earth.

Dark Witch by Nora Roberts and Danielle Monsch’s Stone Guardian were good books, but not great ones. I’ll write about them and Shannon Stacey’s Snowbound this week. After Archangel’s Legion I’m looking for a really good paranormal romance I can get into. Recommendations anyone?

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Rock Chick Daze

2 Nov

I am in a complete Rock Chick daze. I have lost weeks (WEEKS!) of my life and I blame it all on Kristen Ashley. There are 8 books in the series and as with all series there are some books that I enjoyed a little bit more than the others but overall I loved all the books so much and am recommending the entire series as a whole instead of individual books.
The Rock Chick books are laugh out loud funny, romantic and hot- as in HAWT. I enjoyed the heck out of them and couldn’t put them down in spite of several writing idiosyncrasies that KA has that would usually drive me up the wall. I’ll get the stuff that I didn’t like about her books out of the way first so that I can continue to gush embarrassingly for the rest of this entry.

Most of KA’s books are written in first person. I usually don’t like first person point of view writing as I like getting into the other characters’ heads. In her books KA gets around only getting the main character’s thoughts by breaking all the “rules” and jumping points of views. This is not something I enjoy usually but she placed spaces and sub headings in between the changes in point of view so you’re not taken by surprise. I didn’t like it but it didn’t really bug me too much either. What DID bug the heck out of me was when she would write things like “I was walking out of the room and therefore did not see… (insert action here such as main characters exchanging meaningful looks)”. These lines always left me exasperated. If you didn’t see it then you DIDN’T SEE IT. Period. I don’t get how you can NOT see something and still write about it.

I have read other reviews of her books where the reviewers complained about the amount of detail that KA goes into when describing the clothes that her characters are wearing. I didn’t mind this at all and while I agree that there were times that I would skim over some of the lengthier descriptive paragraphs, I found that I actually liked knowing what my favourite (which was whoever I was reading about at that moment) rock chick was wearing. In fact, what they were wearing was an important part of who they are such as Dolly Parton look alike Daisy or high maintenance Roxie. The Rock Chicks as a group are strong, quirky, attractive women and I believe that their choice of clothing added to their individual quirks/personalities.
The Rock Chick books I believe were originally self-published so there are a few typos here and there but nothing like some of the other self-published train wrecks that you can get via electronic publishing.

These Rock Chick books are my favourite kind of contemporary romance because they are FUNNY. Like laugh out loud, scream and cover your face FUNNY. The humour is similar Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series in that the girls get up to all sorts of mischief by accident and by design. The things that come out of their mouth are both cringe worthy and hilarious. Some of the funniest moments come from conversations between the girls and their hot guys especially in the beginning when they are still fighting being together. Jet and Eddie’s whole racist episode down to the ex-boyfriend showing up will live forever in my mind. Ava’s time by herself in the afternoon that necessitated the cameras being turned off is another scene that made me scream out loud then burst out laughing.

The funny, light-hearted bits were a good balance to the more serious life and death/abuse situations that the chicks found themselves in a lot of the time. KA touched on some pretty serious issues in a couple of her books but managed to keep the books from becoming too heavy or depressing. I liked the fact that while the Rock Chicks all had their own physical life or death issues that they had to work out, they also had to spend a lot of time working out their internal issues and insecurities. Themes of not feeling special, not being good enough or not being worthy are all issues that I would think would resonate quite strongly with women as a whole regardless of background.

Following the whole internal work theme, I have to mention that probably my favourite thing about these books was the very strong theme of family/friends that run through the series. While reading it and certainly at the end of the book you WANT to be part of the Rock Chick family or something similar. You WANT these people to be your friends. Seriously. They always had each other’s backs, both the guys and the girls. The shared camaraderie and history really came through in the books and were very nicely backed up by the epilogues. I love me a good epilogue, especially in books where I get so attached to the characters that I want to know more about their happily ever after. KA does this really well. Nope, no short two page cryptic/ cliff hanger epilogue for the Rock Chicks, KA goes all out with a full chapter long visit to the couple and the group. Stella and Mace’s epilogue and Ava and Luke’s stood out for me especially as giving readers the reassurance that yes, they really WILL live happily ever after.

We cannot talk about the Rock Chick series without talking about their men, the Hot Bunch. Going back to the comparison with the Stephanie Plum series, imagine a whole bunch of Rangers and Morellis and… yup… sigh. The difference of course being that the Rock Chick novels are truly romance novels and while in some of the books there is another guy showing interest just to make things interesting, the stories are really about one guy and one girl falling in love with each other. The men in these books are either cops or part of a private investigation agency with the exception of Ren but in the end all the men are bad asses with a soft spot for women and really isn’t that a perfectly drool worthy combination? These alpha guys have their not so perfect moments (I believe that the term speak in Asshole was mentioned in one of the books) but KA always manages to pull them back before I ended up disliking them intensely. This is also something that she is good at- pushing characters to the limits of unlikeable and then pulling them firmly back into the likeable category (at least for this series. I had major problems with Knight which is in her unfinished hero series and to be fair she does warn readers that her heroes in that series are not the usual).

At the end of the day and all analysis aside, I couldn’t put down these books. I have read other more technically proficient books that I was able to put down and forget about. But with this series I was a total addict, even sneaking pages in at stoplights when driving home! This is not the one bite of beluga caviar that you nibble on daintily at a cocktail party. This series is a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or a bag of Cheetos puffs that you just gobble voraciously and keep eating because you can’t stop even though you know it’s not good for you. The books are in no way perfect but they made me laugh, they made me cry, they made me believe in family and love and deep meaningful connections to other people. The Rock Chick series is fun escapism at its very finest which is why this is definitely a series that I would recommend.

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Review: Angel in Chains by Cynthia Eden

9 Aug

This is a book review that was originally published on the Smart Bitches Trashy Books website as part of their RITA Reader challenge where they asked their followers to review RITA nominated books. This book got a B- grade from me.

I put my hand up to review this book because I got excited by the summary posted on Amazon. Hot and angry Angel of Death saving a girl from snarling panther shifters? For the love of all that is paranormal, batman, sign me up! So I bought the book, put the kids to bed and got ready to stay up all night reading. Only, I didn’t. I was actually able to put it down after 3 chapters and go to sleep! This was my main problem with this book. Even though it had so many things going for it and I really wanted to like it, I never got into it the way I do with the really good books. You know the maybe I’ll just sneak a couple of paragraphs at the stoplight good.

Here are the things that I DID like about the book. It was an interesting premise and I liked that it started out exciting right away with big and bad Az saving Jade in the first chapter. The rest of the book is basically Az and Jade and a few other secondary characters along the way running away from and plotting to kill Brandt, a psycho panther shifter who is Alpha of a pack and is also crazy (as in CRAY CRAY) obsessed with having Jade as his mate.

This was the first and only book of the series that I have read and even if I read it out of order I was able to pick up the story and not get confused which was another thing that I appreciated.

I liked that the world building was interesting and just a bit dark. The whole idea of Fallen Angels is in turns fascinating and vaguely horrifying. It is a completely different take on Angels than Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series where Angels are not from Heaven or have any sort of religious convent school like undertones to them. Cynthia Eden’s Angels have the whole heaven, hell, redemption theme going. There’s even talk of the different kinds of angels: punishment angels, death angels and guardian angels which brings to mind early childhood catechism classes.

I liked that it wasn’t one of those stories where they were fated and therefore fell in love with each other automatically. At the end of the day Az and Jade made the choice to believe in each other and be together, no one else made the choice for them.

One of the biggest things that I DIDN’T like about the book was the main characters. They just weren’t all that likeable. Jade is feisty and has been through hell and back running away from Crazy Brandt who kills everyone that is close to her. She is tough and can take care of herself, as she has been for years but all of a sudden has a blind and total faith in Azrael even if people are telling her he is using her? Just a little hard to swallow. I should have liked her but for some reason I didn’t.

Same goes with Az. One of the best things for me about reading a romance is being able to secretly swoon about the leading man. Az had all the elements but didn’t quite get there for me. In most of the novels that I read authors usually use italics to show the inner thoughts of their characters. This third person omniscient point of view of writing is my favourite because I like being able to read the thoughts of all the main characters of the book, but I found some of the writing of Az’s thoughts really weird. There’s this one scene in particular written from Az’s point of view that was pure WTFery for me:

Her legs curled around his hips and her neck arched as Jade choked out his name.

Thrust. Thrust. He couldn’t get deep enough. (p.105)

So… he is lost in the moment and thinking to himself Thrust. Thrust?! And then later on down the passage the author uses it AGAIN.

Az never wanted to let her go.

Couldn’t.

Thrust. Th-

At which point I thought to myself, Laugh. Laugh.

It totally spoiled the scene for me.

My other major dislike in the story was Brandt the bad guy. He was your totally cookie cutter crazy mad baddie. He killed people left, right and center including those most loyal to him but wouldn’t kill Jade no matter what she did. One of the most unbelievable parts of the story was when he killed his second in command for making a remark he didn’t like. It just didn’t make sense to me at all but then again that may have been the point so who knows?

I really wanted to like this book and give it a higher grade but I couldn’t. Would I read another Cynthia Eden book? Definitely. It was entertaining, the world building was really interesting and the storyline was exciting. Was it a great book? In my humble opinion, no and this probably just comes down to personal taste. Jade and Azrael unlike Eve and Roarke, Rafael and Elena, Rain and Ellysetta are not a couple that I will remember very clearly or with particular fondness.

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