Michele Lee

I am going to cry.

ETA: Thank you so much to those who have donated so far!!

Edited to Add: I’m making this sticky because I will be accepting BOOK donations from those who want to give. So will Shiloh Walker (who has a PO Box, thus prefers books sent to her). All genres, age levels and fiction/non are being sought.

Please consider donating, even if it’s duplicate copies, or books you bought and didn’t read or your used books trade in pile. Our librarians and community are very grateful.

Edited to Add again (8-7-09): Here’s an update from a local news station. The main branch of the library is going to be closed until sometimes after Labor Day. At this point damage is estimated at $5 million and over 50,000 books not to mention boilers, elevators, computers and three, not two, Bookmobiles.)

This is the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library: (picture from this site)

Category: Personal | 1 Comment

August 3

Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs

Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com’s Werewolf Month

Ace Fantasy, 2007
ISBN: 9789441914736
Available: New and Used

There’s something almost soothing about Mercy Thompson, mechanic and skinwalker, adopted werewolf and friend to the fae. She’s the kind of urban fantasy heroine who can walk through a door without some sort of power challenge. She keeps a junked out car in the middle of her yard to disturb the local Alpha’s view, “forgets” to tell people things to avoid fights and uses their own training, body language and tempers against them.

In the second book in the series, Mercy’s vampire friend Stefan asks for her help, and ends up dragging her into one of the darkest plots imaginable. Briggs pulls no punches, pitting the almost sweet, barely supernatural Mercy against a demon-possessed vampire whose very presence threatens the emotional control of vampires, humans, werewolves and fae. Mercy has to step up and find the vampire and his maker before more people die, particularly the people she’s come to care about.

Blood Bound is a solid supernatural mystery shot through with veins of true darkness and a collection of odd and intriguing characters. The Mercy Thompson books already have an established audience who should be pleased to find this one included in the library stacks. Recommended to public and private libraries.

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August 3

Cover Woes

Not mine, other people’s. By now I hope you’ve heard about Justine Larbalestier’s problems with her book featuring a short haired black lead but the cover featuring a long haired white girl.If not go check out the blog entry because the woman is a complete pro in handling it (authors and would-be authors take notes!)

Cover woes are nothing new. authors have no control over them, but often get to be the ones to hear about readers’ disappointment with cover and character clashes.

In fact, here’s another one. In Blue Diablo by Ann Aguirre the character is a slightly chubby woman. Not at all like this woman on the cover:

Maybe I’m just too used to these sort of covers. They irritate me, but not as much as this sort of thing does:

deadline I’ve always hated books where the author name was larger than the title. But this, this is…This is not a Dan Brown book. Dan Brown BLURBED the book and got a bigger place on the cover than the author!

That’s just fucking ridiculous.

I mean, the racial thing is too, incredibly so. If “black covers” don’t sell, then don’t put a person on the cover period.

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July 30

Demon Inside by Stacia Kane

ISBN: 978-1439155073

Dr. Megan Chase is back, and this time, giving readers very little breathing space, Meg is trying to survive fireball flinging car chases with witches and find out who is, literally, exploding her demons. In the mean time she has to try to come to terms with her own parasitic nature, trying to balance her job as a therapist helping people overcome their trauma, and her soul-calling as the leader of the personal demons, who feed off the pain and emotional hurt of humans.

If that wasn’t bad enough Meg, on the precipice between human and demon, between accepting her own darkness and trying to deny it by helping others deny theirs, gets pulled back into the chaos of the family she walked away from and learns startling, disturbing truths about what made her become the woman she is.

I have to start this one with a purely personal response—I have never read a sex scene that made me cry before this book.

The raw emotional pain of Meg, raised in one of the worse imaginable environments, and struggling to come to terms with that as an adult, even if she tries to hide her coping behind her role as a therapist, is overwhelming. Meg is absolutely compelling as she tries to convince herself that she is a good person, despite dating a demon, being part demon, not to mention a demon queen, and the strange cravings for very inhuman things that begin to overcome her. Her own personal darkness, a textbook example of the damage childhood abuse does to an ordinary person, is delicately, but firmly tied into her struggle with the nature of the demons tied to her.

The level of emotion is incredibly high in this book. It’s hard to stomach, hard to watch and impossible not to experience along with Meg.

But despite the sheer desolation there’s a victorious element, because Megan might not be what her family wants, or what her partners in the practice want, or even what her demon followers want, but what she is under the damage is a core of molten steel trying to survive the inferno of emotions and rise in a world where she can be loved, respected and valued.

Demon Inside isn’t a book for everyone, but for those who connect with Megan because of similar pasts and emotions, it could be the sort of book that unexpectedly changes you and therefore is very highly recommended.