Library Journal: This hot, heady title excels in both porn and plot. Recommended for those seeking a solid BDSM-tinged M/M romance with plenty of backstory. Embittered, overworked Michael Sebastian tries to escape the grip of his sinking engineering company for just a week, fleeing to the gay-friendly town of Curacao. He finds himself still living in his head, overthinking and woefully unattached until he meets Sam, a mysterious well-dressed stranger who ends up needing just the punishment Michael has been desperate to give (and then some). Continue reading »
Sep 152014
September 15, 2014
NPR: Bennett is plainly a writer in love with the world he has built — and with good cause. It’s a great world, original and unique, with a scent and a texture, a sense of deep, bloody history, and a naturally-blended magic living in the stones.
Vogue: Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is basically a long-winded way of calling it perfection in book form. It’s from the POV of the “third most popular girl in school” who’s a self-described freak at heart, and it takes a funny, relatable look into the intricacies of high school social hierarchy.
Romantic Times: Priest takes the epistolary format H.P. Lovecraft was fond of and uses it to far better effect, both in terms of characterization and horror. Her protagonists (Lizzie, her sister, her lover Nance O’Neil and the friendly Dr. Seabury) are extremely well drawn even as the nerve and mind-shredding events of 1895 drive them apart. Priest skillfully makes the menace around them specific and concrete while also remaining shadowy and unknowable, achieving maximum impact. Putting real historical characters in genre settings is an idea that’s seemed tired for a while, but this novel shows how compelling it can still be in the right hands.
SFX Magazine: Tonally The Incorruptibles delivers a hearty scoop of Abercrombie-style grimdarkness, although layered with more magic and religion. The prose is extraordinary rich. But that never detracts from what is, ultimately, a ripping yarn. Whether you file it under Western or fantasy, The Incorruptibles is a rare thing: a clever story and an action-packed one.
Philadelphia Inquirer: McGoran’s style is at once hard-boiled and enjoyably breezy. His character descriptions tend to the generic (“The door to one of the cabins opened and two women in their early twenties came out, one large and solid, the other small and wiry with a long braid”). But he keeps the plot and the action humming along in a way that makes Deadout an excellent beach book.
Romantic Times: Harrison is back and ready to rumble with this next exhilarating book in her Elder Races series. This time the story revolves around Xavier del Torro, right-hand vampyre to the powerful Nightkind King and Tess Graham, a human, whose past is coming back to haunt her in a big way. When you crack open a Harrison tale, you know you are in for an amazing ride filled with rich characterization, clever world-building, and exciting adventure!