ISBN: 9780441019458

I bought this book.

I admit I was a little sad when I read the blurb on the back of this book and I realized it wasn’t a direct sequel to the first Edge book, On the Edge. But Andrews is one of my auto-buys so I snatched it up on release day nonetheless. Am I glad I did.

William is a changeling, reviled and abused by the fae-ish bluebloods from the magical Siamese sister to our world called the Weird. After playing a secondary role in the first book William, crushed at the loss of Rose to his friend Declan, hides out in the non-magical “real” world, the Broken. Between the Weird and the Broken is the Edge, where the descendents of exiled, abandoned or escaped Weird families now live.

Tempted by one more job from his military background, and a chance to kill a long time mortal enemy who’s know for slaughtering changelings, especially children, on principle, William ventures back into the Edge. The Mire is a swamp that’s not just filled with Edgers trying to survive, but also with exiles from the Weird who are too strong magically to survive the crossing to the Broken. In the Mire William stumbles right into an old blood feud between two swamp-folk families that makes the Hatfields and the McCoys look like a squabble. One side has just teamed up with William’s enemies and the other…is headed by the brilliant, beautiful and deadly Cerise.

Cerise has been the head of her family for only a few days, since her parents disappeared, the first act in the flaring of an old blood feud that she’d rather move past. In fact, she’d like to move past the swamp, being poor and having to deal with the deadly (and crazy) blueblood she found in the swamp, but to do so she’d have to abandon her family, an act that would make them targets for the stronger land owners in the Mire.

Bayou Moon is a thick book, pushing 500 pages. But it’s a solid filled read, with tons to catch a reader’s interest. The hot-blooded romance is tempered (a lot) by wicked fight scenes, more enemies than you can count and a surprising almost-science fiction twist. Its a fast ride, compelling with a pitch perfect take on non-human characters and a plethora of truly imaginative fantasy elements. Humor, attitude, action and some really sexy leads, Bayou Moon is an awesome addition to the urban fantasy (rural fantasy? Swamp fantasy?) genre and a great place to start for readers wanting to know what all the buzz is about.

ISBN: 1563892618

I bought this book.

Preacher graphic novel #1

You’d think it wouldn’t get much weirder than a faithless Texas preacher possessed by a half-angel, half-demon. Or his friend, who happens to be a hardcore Irish vampire. And his girlfriend, Tulip? Well, let’s just say she can keep up.

I don’t remember who recommended this series to me, or when, but I remember picking the first two up through the Science Fiction Book Club and to this day I look at that as one of the indicators that I’d become an adult. The series starts hard, with Tulip failing a hit and landing in Cassidy’s car in a nearly-failed getaway. But readers figure out something is up right away when Cassidy takes a bullet to the head and doesn’t even flinch. The pair flee until the sun rises and Cassidy has to take refuse in the back of his truck. Meanwhile Tulip borrows his vehicle to investigate an explosion in the distance. In the shattered remains of a church she finds one survivor—the man who left her, Jesse Custer.

Freshly possessed by Genesis (the spawn of an affair between an angel and a demon, and inheritor of both race’s power) Jesse discovers he now has—literally–the Word of God at his disposal, and the angels responsible for recapturing Genesis have unleashed the Saint of Killers to take him down.

Jesse, always being one for the impossible, decides to take the fight right up to God’s door and hold him responsible for all the everything in the world.

This volume also includes the hilarious and killer side quest wherein the gang lands in New York. Cassidy runs into an old friend and some seriously bloody hijinks ensue.

Preacher: Gone to Texas, is definitely adults only, and only gore lovers (or toleraters) at that. It’s batter dipped violence deep fried in a spicy version of Christian mythology and utterly unique. And no matter how wild the ride is, if you keep reading it’ll get even crazier, straight into “Who thinks of this?” territory.

ISBN: 9780441019410

I purchased this book.

Sirantha Jax, book 4

This review contains spoilers for previous books in the series.

When last we left Sirantha Jax, one of the elite jumpers born with the gene that allows navigators to travel through the subspace area known as grimspace, she’d escaped an alien planet she was sent to as an ambassador after breaking her love and captain, March, out of the alien jail.

Killbox starts fast and remains very hard to put down. What was hinted at in the last books, the increasing invasions of the flesh-eating monstrous aliens known as the Morgut, has become a full on, planned attacks as the Morgut are clearly declaring war on their favorite tasty snacks. However Farwan, the mafia/Empire-like organization that had been protecting the human worlds, have been exposed for their corrupt actions, namely the sabotage and destruction of a ship carrying beloved political emissaries (and the subsequent brainwashing attempting to set Jax herself up for the crash that killed everyone but her). Now that Farwan has fallen there is no one else to step up and protect human space from pirates, the Syndicate and the Morgut. The Conglomerate has been too dependent on others for too long and lacks the force to fight the coming war.

So it does the next best thing, and hires March to build an Armada to stave off the attacks while plan B formulates. Meanwhile other members of March’s crew (all becoming increasingly more important) are at work at a variety of projects. Jax is training the first non-Farwan trained jumper. Doc is working on tech that will turn Jax’s ability to heal from grimspace damage into a strength rather than a random mutation and Dina is hard at work trying to hash out the secrets of the Morgut ability to jump anywhere, not just from hot spots.

The truth is that they know very little about the Morgut other than they have a 97% kill rate against humans. So now Jax and March and the crew find themselves on the front lines of a war against an nearly unknown, but very deadly enemy with the clock ticking until the major invasion begins.

Killbox is a fabulous book. It’s complex, and exposes more background of grimspace and human space travel and how the world came to be where it is in this series. Furthermore Jax has changed as well, into a solid, determined woman willing to face down ultimate evils to help the people she loves.

This series is far too complex to ever fit into a single book, or a trilogy and nearly impossible to put down. Fans of the big SF flicks out there, from Serenity to Star Wars, will find everything they love about those stories in this one. Princesses, space ship battles, monsters, lasers and aliens, Killbox has it all and is poised to thrust this series into a strong, tight spin to its (I hope) victorious end.