Moon Called by Patricia Briggs: A book worth rereading

I rarely reread novels because I don’t find them to be as enjoyable the second time around, plus knowing how the book ends also ruins the suspense, which is most of the fun. But after finishing Patricia Brigg’s newest book, Hunting Ground, I wanted to spend more time with some of her wonderful book characters so I pulled Moon Called off of my shelf, despite my general misgivings about rereading books. But to my delight, I found this book to be just as enjoyable on a second reading, as on the first.

Mercedes Thompson, or Mercy, is a Volkswagen mechanic who is also a walker, meaning that she was born with the ability to shape shift into a coyote. Mercy’s neighbor is a domineering Alpha werewolf, one of her regular customers is a vampire and her old boss is a goblin. So when things start heating up in the supernatural world, it’s no surprise that Mercy gets caught in the middle.

One day, as Mercy is working in her garage, a haggard, hollow-eyed teenage boy, calling himself Mac, shows up looking for a job. Mercy’s high-tuned senses can tell that this boy is not human but a werewolf and a very recently turned werewolf as well. He also appears to be running from some sort of trouble, trouble that follows him to Mercy’s doorstep and forces her to turn to the Alpha for help. As Mercy discovers that Mac is running from a group that has been experimenting with drugs on newly turned, captive werewolves, she finds herself more deeply entrenched in this dangerous situation. And when the Alpha himself is attacked and his daughter kidnapped, Mercy is forced to take charge of the situation, particularly since she suspects there is a traitor in the pack.

In a market overflowing with books about vampires and werewolves, Patricia Briggs’ books really stand out. At this time I have read both the Mercy Thompson series and The Alpha and Omega books, all of which I have enjoyed enormously. The stories are well told and the characters are well developed and memorable. It is clear that plenty of research has gone into the books regarding the habits and behaviors of actual wolves, and Briggs’ convincingly used this information in creating her werewolves.

Mercy is a great protagonist, independent, loyal and tough; ready to come to defense of her friends despite the dangers involved. She is a likable and believable heroine whose adventures you will want to follow from book to book. The two main male protagonists, Samuel and Adam, vie for Mercy’s affection. Adam is the Alpha who took her under his protection (despite her protests) and Samuel was Mercy’s first love who she came close to marrying at the age of 16, and who now reappears in her life, many years later. While each of these strong male characters has a central part in the book, the romance is subtle and sweet; woven into parts of the story but not taking over the plot, as in many similar books. The story is exciting and well thought out. Even when I reread it and knew exactly what to expect I still really enjoyed it just because I like the characters so much and the story was still fun.

I highly recommend Moon Called to all fans of fantasy. Even if you feel like you have had your fill of vampire and werewolf literature, I strongly suggest that you give this book a try as it offers something different than many of the other books out there.

Drop by and Say Hi

Until I recently became a blogger, I never realized the importance of leaving a comment on the blogs I visited. Yes, I was a lurker. I would stop by to enjoy the interesting articles and book reviews but would rarely leave behind a sign of my visit. I just didn't realize how much bloggers appreciate those comments which are proof that someone is actually reading the articles that they so painstakingly wrote. Now that I myself am I blogger I have my own lurkers to contend with. I know they have been here because my traffic counter tells me so, but since many visitor leave no sign of their passing through (and my mother doesn't count) it often feels like the words I have written are going unread.

So dear visitor, next time you stop by, take a moment to say hi.

And since I'm always in search of a good book to read, why don't you tell me what you recommend? (It doesn't have to be scifi or fantasy, since I do enjoy many other genres as well)

I can't wait to hear from you!

Nice Girl's Don't Have Fangs by Molly Harper

Jane Jameson is satisfied with her quiet life as a children's librarian in Half Moon Hollow, the town where she grew up. OK, it would be nice if Adam, her crush from high school, would notice her or if her mother would stop guilt-tripping her about the fact that she is not yet married with children, like her younger sister. But Jane has a job she loves, a nice house she inherited from her favorite aunt and a loving dog to come home to each day.

But things take a turn for the worse when Jane is suddenly fired from her job and replaced with the head librarian's daughter, who no one else will hire due to her tendency to start fires.

And to add insult to injury, the envelope Jane is handed as she walks out the door does not contain the expected severance check but a twenty-five dollar gift certificate to a bar.

With nothing better to do, Jane decides to make good use of the gift certificate and heads over to the bar in order to drown her sorrows. After becoming satisfyingly drunk Jane gets in her car and carefully makes her way home.

As a final horrific end to one of the worst days of her life, Jane's car breaks down and she is forced make her way home by foot. But after falling down in a ditch by the side of the road, a passing motorist mistakes her for a deer and shoots her.

Luckily for Jane, the handsome man she had chatted with at the bar had been following her at a distance, to make sure she arrived home safely (a task he apparently failed at) and he also happens to be a vampire. So as Jane lies dying, watching her life flashing by and horrified by her ignoble end, Gabriel rushes over and offers her the opportunity to escape death by becoming a vampire.

When Jane wakes she is faced with the task of adjusting to her new undead life and its multitude of challenges. How does one tell their family that they are now dead? how do you get a job when you can't go out during the day? And what exactly is it that vampire do all night? Plus Jane now has to deal with her dead aunt's ghost and her handsome sire, who definitely seems interested in more then just instructing her on her new vampire lifestyle.

Unfortunately, Jane soon discovers that life is no easier once you are dead. When a local vampire is murdered, Jane is the main suspect. And false rumors about Jane's licentious behavior, don't help the situation either.

Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs was a fun, lighthearted read similar in style to Mary Janice Davidson's books. It was a funny, irreverent look at vampires and their lifestyle that included vampire welcoming committees and "alternative lifestyle" sections at Walmart. While this is not the kind of book I would usually pick up, I found myself enjoying it as a nice break from some of the darker fantasy books that I have been reading lately. I would certainly recommend this book to fans of paranormal romance as long as you don't mind the fact that its a little light in the plot department

Book-A - Day Giveaway (Only in Israel)

In honor of the upcoming ICon 2009 (Oct-4th to Oct. 9th) I will be giving away one free scifi or fantasy book on each day of the festival.

The books in the giveaway include:

Warbreaker
by Brandon Sanderson
Published: June 2009

Synopsis: Epic fantasy heavyweight Sanderson (the Mistborn series) pens a powerful stand-alone tale of unpredictable loyalties, dark intrigue and dangerous magic. To keep a treaty made long ago, the king of Idris must send his daughter to marry Susebron, the God King of Hallandren. Loath to part with his eldest daughter, Vivenna, King Dedelin instead sends his youngest daughter, tomboyish 17-year-old Siri, who struggles to make sense of the schemers and spies in Susebron's court. Hoping to rescue her sister, Vivenna joins a group of Idrian operatives with questionable motives. As Vivenna comes to terms with her magical abilities, resurrected hero Lightsong questions the role of the undead Returned Gods, who command Hallandren's mighty army of zombie soldiers. Sanderson melds complex, believable characters, a marvelous world and thoughtful, ironic humor into an extraordinary and highly entertaining story.

The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker -
by Leanna Renee Hieber
Published: Aug. 2009

This book was won by Revi

Synopsis: What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Hidden in the dark heart if Victorian London, the Romanesque school was dreadfully imposing, a veritable fortress, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met its powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadows, of the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She saw simply that she as different, haunted, with her snow white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gift. This arched stone doorway was a portanl to a new life, to an education far from what could be had at a convent-and it was an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death.

Read a review of Strangely Beautiful here

The Tel Aviv Dossier
by Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv
Published: Sept. 2009

Synopsis: Into the city of Tel Aviv the whirlwinds come, and nothing will ever be the same.In a city torn apart by a violence they cannot comprehend, three disparate people—a documentary film-maker, a yeshiva student, and a psychotic fireman—must try to survive, and try to find meaning: even if it means being lost themselves. As Tel Aviv is consumed, a strange mountain rises at the heart of the city, and shows the outline of what may be another, alien world beyond. Can there be redemption there? Can the fevered rumours of a coming messiah be true?

As the city loses contact with the outside world and closes in on itself, as the few surviving children play and scavenge in the ruins, can innocence survive, and is it possible for hope to spring amid such chaos?

A potent mixture of biblical allusions, Lovecraftian echoes, and contemporary culture, The Tel Aviv Dossier is part supernatural thriller, part meditation on the nature of belief—an original and involving novel painted on a vast canvas in which, beneath the despair, humor is never absent.Experience the last days of Tel Aviv...

The Apex Book of World SF
Edited by Lavie Tidhar
Published: Sept. 2009

Synopsis: The world of speculative fiction is expansive; it covers more than one country, one continent, one culture. Collected here are sixteen stories penned by authors from Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries across the globe. Each one tells a tale breathtakingly vast and varied, whether caught in the ghosts of the past or entangled in a postmodern age. Among the spirits, technology, and deep recesses of the human mind, stories abound. Kites sail to the stars, technology transcends physics, and wheels cry out in the night. Memories come and go like fading echoes and a train carries its passengers through more than simple space and time. Dark and bright, beautiful and haunting, the stories herein represent speculative fiction from a sampling of the finest authors from around the world.

Dead Until Dark
by Charlaine Harris

Synopsis: Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability." She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome- and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all her life...But Bill has a disability of his own: He's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs out with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of-big surprise-murder. And when one of Sookie's coworker's is killed, she fears she's next..

Hunting Ground

by Patricia Briggs (Please note: This copy of the book is an early addition that I received from the agent and did not yet have the cover image put on it. As such, the cover only contains the title and author, not the image that you see on the left. This can be a definite advantage if you are reading it in public and don't want strangers peeking over to see what you are reading)

Synopsis: Mated to werewolf Charles Cornick, the son -and enforcer -of the leader of the North American werewolves, Anna Latham now knows how dangerous being a werewolf is, especially when a werewolf opposes Charles and his father is struck down. Charles's reputation makes him the prime suspect, and the penalty for the crime is execution. Now Anna and Charles must combine their talents to hunt down the real killer -or Charles will take the fall.

Read a review of Hunting Ground

The Warded Man
by Peter Brett
Published: March 2009

Synopsis As darkness falls each night, the corelings rise–demons who well up from the ground like hellish steam, taking on fearsome form and substance. They possess supernatural strength and powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards–symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and mystery, and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile.

Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault.
Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past.

The Dreaming Void
by Peter Hamilton

Synopsis: The year is 3589, fifteen hundred years after Commonwealth forces barely staved off human extinction in a war against the alien Prime. Now an even greater danger has surfaced: a threat to the existence of the universe itself.
At the very heart of the galaxy is the Void, a self-contained microuniverse that cannot be breached, cannot be destroyed, and cannot be stopped as it steadily expands in all directions, consuming everything in its path: planets, stars, civilizations. The Void has existed for untold millions of years. Even the oldest and most technologically advanced of the galaxy’s sentient races, the Raiel, do not know its origin, its makers, or its purpose.

But then Inigo, an astrophysicist studying the Void, begins dreaming of human beings who live within it. Inigo’s dreams reveal a world in which thoughts become actions and dreams become reality. Inside the Void, Inigo sees paradise. Thanks to the gaiafield, a neural entanglement wired into most humans, Inigo’s dreams are shared by hundreds of millions–and a religion, the Living Dream, is born, with Inigo as its prophet. But then he vanishes.

Suddenly there is a new wave of dreams. Dreams broadcast by an unknown Second Dreamer serve as the inspiration for a massive Pilgrimage into the Void. But there is a chance that by attempting to enter the Void, the pilgrims will trigger a catastrophic expansion, an accelerated devourment phase that will swallow up thousands of worlds.

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The winners of each day's drawing will get to choose which book they would like to receive, from the books available.

Winners will be chosen through Random.org

This contest is open to Israeli residents only.

To Enter the Book Giveaway

To enter the book drawing all you have to do is sign up for my mailing list
which, in addition to giving you the opportunity of winning one of these awesome books, will also inform you of updates to my website and provide you with interesting scifi and fantasy news.

Additional Entries

To receive a second entry into the book drawing, help promote the giveaway through Twitter. The message should say something like this: "Book-A-Day Giveaway. Win free Scifi and Fantasy books. In Israel only! #42SFF" Make sure to include a link to this blog post and the hashtag #42SFF so that I will know you Tweeted the message. You can also leave me a message, here on the blog, letting me know that you tweeted it, just to make sure.

You can receive a third entry into the drawing by visiting my table at the Icon, on Oct. 6th and 7th, where the books in the contest will be displayed, so that you may view them in all their glory. I will also be selling second-hand science fiction and fantasy books there, most of which you can browse through on my website 42SciFi-Fantasy.com.

The Book drawing will begin on the first day of the ICon, October 4th though you can enter the drawing up until October 8th, though I suggest you don't wait so long because you will miss out on winning from the full selection of books.

For more information about the ICon, visit www.42scifi-fantasy.com/ICon.html

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters: Book Trailer

Although I don't have much interest in reading this book, after watching this trailer I would love to see the movie!

Wasn't that great!

Finally finished Stranger in a Strange Land

I finally finished Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, and it only took me two weeks, which is about a week and a half longer then it usually takes me to read a book.

Since I am not much of a science fiction reader I didn't start out with high expectations of enjoying the book, but to my surprise I did become rather engrossed by it. At least in the first half of the book. In the second half, the tone and pace suddenly changed and I found myself plodding along, continuously hoping the end was near.

Here's a brief summery of Stranger in a Strange Land:

A delegation to Mars discovers that while the members of the previous expedition had all died, there had been one survivor, the newborn son of two of the crew members. This baby, Valentine Michael Smith, remained on Mars where he was raised by the local Martians, for the past 20 years. Excited by their discovery, the members of the second expedition bundle Smith off onto their ship and bring him back to Earth.

On Earth, Smith is faced with a culture and mind set that he is completely unfamiliar with. While he is human in body, Smith's mindset is utterly alien. And so, with the help of friends, he attempts to learn about humans and their behaviors. At the same time, Smith causes the people around him to reevaluate their own beliefs and standards of behavior. Eventually Smith starts the "Church of All Worlds" where he encourages his followers to shed all of their inhibitions and ingrained conceptions of what's acceptable in order to become happier and healthier human beings, thereby becoming more like the Martians that Smith was raised by.

As I mentioned above, the first half of the book went smoothly enough and I even found myself enjoying it. There was action, suspense, a little romance- everything that I usually enjoy in a book. But in the second part of the book, all of the characters that I had come to like, were suddenly behaving like whacked-out nut jobs on pot. All of Smith's friends and followers were suddenly running around naked, participating in wild orgies, babbling on about how everyone is God and dropping the word "grok" into every sentence at least twice.

As a side note, apparently the word "grok" had become so popular after the publication of Stranger in a Strange Land that it was even included in the Oxford English Dictionary. I warn you though, that one is likely to find themselves unconsciously using this word in casual conversation after reading this book. I'm not sure of it's the catchy sound of the word itself or the fact that it is repeated so frequently that, but if you are not careful you will find your self using it as well. I'm embarrassed to admit that I myself came close to doing it once.

But back to my review. I just found it unbelievable how easily everyone in the book gave in to Smith's beliefs and point of view. A couple of characters showed some slight resistance but they were soon converted, though the reason why is not quite clear. But Heinlein did do a very good job of evaluating accepted social mores by viewing them through the eyes of someone who is completely unfamiliar with them. Smith arrives on Earth with vastly different ideas about everything, from marriage and death to cannibalism. And while I was not quite as taken in by the Martian theology and lifestyle as the characters of the book, I did find the different view points that were presented to be interesting.

While I doubt I will be rereading Stranger in a Strange Land anytime soon, I do at least feel like I have taken a step forward in my goal of familiarizing myself with the scifi genre. And if I ever find myself drowning in a conversation with a group of scifi devotees, at least I have one book I can casually bring up inorder to save face. I bet I even get extra points if I throw in a "grok."

My foray into Science Fiction

In order to justify my calling this blog SFFChat, when I really have only talked about fantasy so far, I have decided to attempt to read a science fiction book.

I'll admit that I am not a big science fiction fan. I hated A Wrinkle in Time, 1984, and Brave New World, books that I had to read for school and which led me to decide that scifi was not for me (admittedly, the fact that I had to read them for school might have had to do with my dislike for the books but I have no intention of rereading them in order to find out).

But I recently read a few different YA dystopian novels that I highly enjoyed, such as The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (see review below) and The Host, by Stephenie Meyer, and they got me thinking that perhaps there might be some scifi books out there that I might actually like. Though it has to be something light on the technical science stuff. When I read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book I kept thinking 'this would be great if they would only leave out all the detailed scientific explanations.' I don't care how time travel works, just that it does; which is probably why I generally prefer fantasy.

So for my first serious foray into SF I have decided to try Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. I heard someone recommend this book as a "science fiction book for people that don't like science fiction," which seems like a good endorsement to me. Plus Heinlein is one of the major writer of the genre and the book is a classic, so this should be a literary enriching experience as well.
All-in-all, it seems like a good starting point.

I'm really quite excited about this. Really. (no, I'm not trying to convince myself of anything here)

So off I go, into the wonderful world of science fiction...