Heroine Week, Day 4 – Demons, Warriors and Machiavellian Caregivers: The Women of Meljean Brook’s Guardian Series

Warning: Mild spoilers ahead, especially for the third book, Demon Night.

To me, Paranormal Romance* has fairytale quality. The stories feel fantastic beyond the obvious, probably because, in some ways, it sticks to traditional genre conventions and gender roles. The men are strong, dominant and possessive; whereas the women, regardless of strength, most of the time need to be saved and are visibly weaker than their male counterparts.

However, in the past few years this has started to change. The women have reclaimed their agency, the heroes have discovered their sensitive, respectful sides, and the different relationships established between heroes and heroines have moved towards a middle that begins to resemble true partnership.

Meljean Brook’s books perfectly fit this developing pattern, and we should stand to attention and take note of it. Her heroines push boundaries, defy expectations, and question conventions. They have agency and know their strengths and limitations well. They save the day, but also know when it’s wise to let someone else do the saving. These are complex and interesting characters that make their heroes work hard to become worthy of such wonderful women.

Review: Fire & Frost by Meljean Brook, Carolyn Crane, and Jessica Sims

Source: A review copy was provided by the authors. 

Fire and Frost is the newest collaboration between authors Meljean Brook, Carolyn Crane and Jessica Sims. The novellas are unique and almost impossible to compare, but they do have two things in common: the charming, compelling characters and the way the “hot and cold” theme has been cleverly incorporated into each story.

In Speed Mating by Jessica Sims we meet Estrella, a mixed tiger and lion shifter (or liger) who is about to go into heat and asks her clan’s alpha to help her find a suitable male to have sex with. Hilarity ensues. Well, not hilarity exactly, but as the title suggests, this is a light, tongue-in-cheek story that’s all about having fun while still managing to sneak in an interesting and welcome take on the ubiquitous shifter romance.

Book Talk: Guardian Demon by Meljean Brook (A Long Post with Crappy Pictures)

Image credit: Horia Varlan

Important Note: this post is filled with very significant spoilers for the Guardian series by Meljean Brook. If you haven’t read the books, don’t read it (it won’t make sense if you’re unfamiliar with it, so you’re not missing much).

Today, our friend and fellow blogger, Nath, is joining us to talk about the last book in Meljean Brook's Guardian series (you can also find this post at Breezing Through). We're huge fans and can't wait to read the book, so in the meantime we're going to speculate all we can. 

Nath: If you've been around blogland in the past weeks, you’re probably aware that Ms. Meljean Brook finally unveiled the cover for her last book in her Guardian series, Guardian Demon. But the cover wasn't alone, we also got a blurb. Brie, being a huge fan of the series, was so excited that she shot me an email wanting to discuss and do some guesswork about what might be happening in this final installment. She also had the bright idea to share this discussion with fellow fans and have you join us! So feel free to add your two cents on the comments!!

Review: Here There Be Monsters by Meljean Brook

I've been a fan of the Guardian Series for ages so when I found out about Ms. Book's new series I was eager to read it. Here There Be Monsters was a complete different experience though, I can’t believe that one single person can come up with such different worlds and do it so well. I’m actually in awe of people like Meljean Brook, Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews and so many other brilliant writers and storytellers.

Review: The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

Is no secret that I’m a huge fan of paranormal romances and even techno-fiction and sci-fiction.  I’m the first to recognize that I have read I don’t know how many novels about strange things and creatures. However, as open minded as I am, I had never ever tried Steampunk, the mix between historical and sci-fic wasn’t exactly appealing for me. Then, Brie wrote this great review about Here There Be Monsters and I decided to give it a go. Again I’m in huge debt with Brie –I’ll need several lives to pay her-.

The Iron Duke is the first novel of the Iron Seas series by Meljean Brook. You don’t have to read Here There Be Monsters- a novella- to follow the plot, however reading it will give you a necessary background to understand the complex and detailed world that Brook has created.

Review & Giveaway: Demon Marked by Meljean Brook

In case you didn’t know, Meljean Brook is one of my favorite authors, not in the romance genre, or the paranormal genre, one of my favorite authors period. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure that the Guardian series is my all-time favorite book series. I don’t usually preorder books because I mostly only read on my Kindle, but I made an exception with this one just in case they ran out of e-copies (impossible right?) that’s how much I wanted to make sure that I was getting this book as soon as I could.

Demon Marked is book seven in the series -not counting several novellas that are in between- and if you go to Brook’s webpage you will find an extensive guide to the series so you can have an overall idea of where the story is at should you decide to start with this book instead of the first one. But, to be honest, the reason why this series is so good is because the story is complex and full of twists and turns, if you don’t start with the first book (actually the first novella) then it won’t be the same experience, not to mention that if you read that guide then all the surprises will be spoiled for you. So what I’m trying to say is please read these books in order, besides, this is the second to last book in the series and why would you want to start here? Go back and read the Hot Spell anthology and Demon Angel and read the whole thing.

Review: Riveted by Meljean Brook

Source:  we received a copy of the book from the author for review purposes. 

Is no secret that I’m a fan of Meljean Brook. Her characters are compelling, the worlds she creates are complex and reading her books is a wonderful experience. That’s the reason why Riveted was one of my most anticipated books of the year. Now that I’ve read it, I can tell you that the anticipation was deserved.

Annika grew up on an isolated village in Iceland, a very uncommon village. What makes it extraordinary is also the reason why it must remain a secret. So for years its inhabitants have fueled the mystery with legends and stories. But one day Annika’s foolish mistake endangered that secret and her sister, Källa, took the blame. As a result, Källa was exiled and Annika left the village to bring her back.

An Illustrated Review: Guardian Demon by Meljean Brook

Source: A review copy was provided by the author. 

Warning: One spoiler for the previous books and one somewhat vague spoiler of something that happens in the first chapter of this one.

As you guys know (because I keep telling you), this is my favorite series, and the final book, Guardian Demon, was one of my most anticipated book of, well, ever. So it's a bittersweet moment for me, because as much as I enjoyed the book, saying goodbye to a beloved series is never easy. The good news is that I read the book in May, so I’ve had time to get over the book hangover, and this review won’t be a blubbering mess.

Remember how Nath and I wrote a post filled with theories about the book? Well, it turns out that we suck at guessing, because of all our theories the only one we kind of got right was this one:

Review: Angels of Darkness (Anthology) by Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Meljean Brook and Sharon Shinn

I wonder if angels have replaced vampires as the supernatural creatures of the moment. Lately there’s been an explosion of books about angels or with angel-like beings, and they seem to have taken the romance world by storm -or maybe these creatures have always been a popular subject and I’m just catching on-.  Whatever it is, it’s clear that they are here to stay and I’m glad because they make fascinating book characters, as this anthology clearly proves.

I’m not a huge fan of anthologies and it’s unusual for me to find one where I actually am familiar with all the authors involved (I haven’t read anything by Shinn but she has been on my TBR list for ages), which is the reason why I wanted to read this book.

That One Time I Finished a Serial and Liked It: The Kraken King, Parts V-VIII by Meljean Brook

Last month I was over at Dear Author guest reviewing the first half of Meljean Brook’s first serial, The Kranken King, and today I’m guest reviewing the second and final half.

Reading this serial was an interesting, choppy experience. I received surprise ARC’s of the first four installments back in May, but I didn’t get the two final parts until last week. So I did get to read the serial as a serial, but not in the way it was intended (although obviously there’s no right or wrong ways to approach a serial). This didn’t really affect my enjoyment because I really liked each part, so not knowing when or if I would be getting early review copies only increased my anticipation. I’m very happy with the final product, and I feel like it was money well spent (I pre-ordered all the parts months ago), but as much as I loved TKK, I haven’t changed my mind about serials, even though I’m more willing to read them as serials (as opposed to just waiting to read all the parts at once), so I guess there’s that.

I hope you enjoy my vague, gushing, slightly repetitive review. And if you decide to try the book, come back and let me know how you liked it!

That One Time I Read Half a Serial and Liked It: The Kraken King by Meljean Brook

Tentacle!

I’m guest reviewing the first four parts of The Kraken King serial over at Dear Author. This is a spoiler-free, general review of the first half of the serial, so it reads like a review of the whole thing. I’m not a fan of the format, but I really enjoyed this one, even though I’ll probably wait until I have the final four parts to read them all at once.

I also feel like I should warn you that this is a very positive review. You guys know how much I love Ms. Brook’s books, but I actually struggled with finding things to criticize, something that didn’t even happen with Guardian Demon. Part of it is that what I read was all very, very good, and part of it is that I haven’t read the whole thing yet, so I’m missing half the information. In that regard, writing the review was an interesting exercise, just as interesting --and slightly frustrating-- as reading the serial. I probably should have serialized my review instead of looking at it as a whole, but even then I think I would have had a hard time finding something to criticize, because each part has enough individual merits to stand on its own. And don’t worry, the book I will review next is one of the worse I've read this year, so I’ll will bring balance to the Force.

For those of you interested in the series, all the books stand alone ridiculously well,  but I would read them in order just to build the sense of the world in the order the novels were published. Also, The Kraken King offers a perspective of the world that’s pretty different to the one we get in The Iron Duke, so having that contrast makes the experience richer.

That’s it! Go read the review and let me know what you think. I’m also interested to hear how you feel about serials: love them, hate them, meh!, is there a serial that changed your mind about the format, etc.

2011, A Year in Books: The Best

This year I read a lot of books, I don’t have an exact number but I think it was over 200 books. Not all of them were published in 2011 and not all of them were good, some of them were huge disappointments (I’m looking at you Susan Elizabeth Phillips), but I think that overall it was a good year for romance novels.

I admit that most of the Contemporary Romances of the year were either mediocre or good, but just a few were truly outstanding, and only two books made my list:

Because It's Never Too Late: My Favorite Books of 2014

Image Credit: Abhi Sharma

I don’t know about you, but I always thought that January  February  March needed more “Best of” lists. I mean, why so greedy, December?  Why do you hoard all the lists? Since I’m contrary like that (and didn’t have time to write this thing in December when I should have and then the months kept passing and it became The Beast to Be Defeated! GAH!!!) and because it’s never too late to annoy people with my choices, today I present you with my The Most Memorable List of Bestest Books that Ever Booked in 2014. It’s not going to be predictable or repetitive at all, so get ready to be blown away by so much awesomeness!

On a more serious note I must say that I always have good reading years, so you won’t hear me complain about having a hard time finding good books or coming up with ten titles to put on the list, but this year my productivity was so lacking and my reading so scattered, that even now, after I’ve had time to think about what I read, what I loved and why, I can’t even find the energy to remember. So memorable is a good way to describe these books, because they were the ones that first came to mind when I was having a hard time mustering the enthusiasm to blog.

Heroine Week: Wherein I Tell You How Awesome It’s Going to Be and Why

Welcome to Heroine Week, an event whose main purpose is to celebrate female characters and focus the conversation on them.

Heroine Week is all about, well, the heroines, but also about the guests. They made this event possible, and I’m grateful and honored to host their insightful, funny and thought-provoking posts.

Here’s a tiny preview of what you can expect:

Follow My Book Blog Friday! (04/29 to 05/06)

Today’s featured blog is Starting the Next Chapter, is a very cool looking blog so don’t forget to visit and follow! Let’s say hello to Marla who is running the show over there.

This week’s question is a very hard one!

Q. Keeping with the dystopian and apocalypse theme that seems to be running rampant on parajunkee.com, I have one very hard question for you: If you were stocking your bomb shelter, what books would you HAVE to include if you only had space for ten?

Mines are, in no particular order (except the first one that is my favorite book EVER and I must have read a thousand times!):

Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosted by parajunkee.com

1. Timeline by Michael Chrichton
2. Carnal Innocence by Nora Roberts
3. The Unsung Hero by Suzanne Brockmann
4. Over the Edge by Suzanne Brockmann
5. Angels Fall by Nora Roberts
6. Demon Nigh by Meljean Brook
7. Shades of Twilight by Linda Howard
8. After the Night by Linda Howard
9. It Had to Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
10. Can I cheat on this one and just say my Kindle? No? Ok then, my last pick is Private Scandals by Nora Roberts.

There you go! Hopefully the apocalypse never comes because choosing books would be terrible (that’s right, if the apocalypse comes my main concern would be which books to save…).

Hi there!!! As Brie told you I was camping Thursday night at Buckinghan Palace. After a long night and day (from 9pm Thursday to 4pm Friday with no sleep) I saw everyone: Kate, Prince William, The Queen, Prince Charles and Prince Harry, Kate's Family and even Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia from Spain!!!! I'll post the photos later.

Well this is my list:

1. Lover Awakened by JR Ward
2. Mr. Perfect by Linda Howard
3. Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts
4. Shopaholic & Baby by Sophie Kinsella
5. Can you keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella
6. Sweet Trouble by Susan Mallery
7. Over the Edge by Suzanne Brockmann
8. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
9. Unlawful Contract by Pamela Clare
10. Aint She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It is really hard to choose so probably, if you ask me in a month or so, I will give you a different list.

 

Follow My Book Blog Friday!: (06 / 10 to 06 / 17)

Today's feature blog is Nicki J Markus. Let's say hello to Nicki who runs the blog. Remember to head over there and follow.


Today's question is:

The magic book fairy pops out of your cereal box and says "you and your favorite character (from a book of course) can switch places!" Who are you going to switch with?

That’s a tough one, but in the spirit of the last book that I read (Kiss of Snow) I would choose to be Sienna, not only I’d be younger but Hawke sure is really hot and Sienna's powers are scary.  The real truth is that I can not choose a heroine. I want to be Becky from the Shopaholic Series (Sophie Kinsella) and Bella from the Black Dagger Brotherhood (J.R. Ward) and Taylor from the Guardian Series (Meljean Brook). Actually; I think that Taylor it is! Oh yeahh, I easily could deal with Michael!

News, Celebrations and Tournaments

Of Birthdays and Blogoversaries

I can’t believe it's March already, at this rate I’ll blink and it will be Christmas again. I’m actually happy that this month came so fast because on the 21st Romance Around the Corner will be celebrating its first year anniversary. The blog went live on the 9th but the 21st was the day we posted our first review, so that’s the day it counts. We need to plan something special to do that day, but to be honest, just the fact that you’re reading us and we continue to post reviews is special enough for us. Also, my birthday is March 28th and the blog has been the best present I’ve ever given to myself (although I once ate two whole racks of BBQ ribs which comes a close second, and as the most delicious present I’ve ever eaten, followed but the worse birthday indigestion that shall not be named).

Follow My Book Blog Friday! (07/22 to 07/29)

Today’s featured blog is We Fancy Books, don’t forget to stop by and follow them!

This week’s question is:

Q. Name 3 authors that you would love to sit down and spend an hour or a meal with just talking about either their books or get advice on writing from?

My two favorite authors in the world are Nora Roberts and Michael Crichton. Unfortunately Michael died two years ago so meeting him would be quite difficult and scary. I’m not sure if I want to meet Nora though, because I will pee my pants and scream like a little girl who just got a pony for her birthday and that would be embarrassing. My third choice has to be Meljean Brook, I’m obsessed with her books and at this point if I could only read one book a year (which would be a tragedy so know on wood) it would be one of hers.

WINNERS!

This week we had several giveaways going so I've got a little list of winners to announce. I’ve already emailed the winners so if you didn't get an email from me please check your spam folder just in case. If you didn't get it let me know through a comment here or send me an email. 

Thanks to everyone who participated! 

Here are the winners: 

Meljean Brook’s Guardian Series: wanderinghues 

Cate Lord’s Lucky Girl: Maria 

Karen Rose Smith’s Reunion Brides Series: Marina M. 

Congratulations guys! I hope you enjoy the books as much as I enjoyed doing the giveaways.

Follow My Book Blog Friday! (05/06 to 05/13)

Today’s featured blog is Magnet 4 Books. I particularly love the background, let’s say hello to Al who runs the show! Take some time to go visit and follow.

This week’s question is:

Q. Circle time! Time to share. What character in a book would you most like to be, what character in a book would you most like to date?

What’s with the hard questions? Well, this book comes out next year, but for what I can see I would love to be Detective Taylor from Meljean Brook’s Guardian series because I have a huge crush on Michael. And if I can’t have him I want either Hawke or Dmitri from Nalini Singh's books. Apparently I’m into guys whose books I haven’t read…. This is like literary blind dating!

Here I am, a little bit late as usual. As for my answers, they depend on my mood! Sometimes I really feel like Sophie Kinsella's characters, because I'm a little bit like them so sometimes I would like to be Becky Bloomwood. I like heroines with personalities but that can be funny and easy-going. Ohhhh! I could easily be Jesse Keyes (From the Bakery Sisters by ) the heroine of Sweet Trouble by Susan Mallery, she can bake! If I'm feeling like kicking some asses Alyssa Locke (From the Troubleshooters Series by Suzanne Brockmann) is my choice. About the Hero I have to agree with Brie, Michael and Hawke are in my top 5 list. But if I'm feeling naughty I think that Zsadist from the Black Dagger Brotherhood is my choice, does that make me Bella? And then there is Sam, both of them: the one from the Troubleshooter Series and the one from Mr Perfect by Linda Howard. Too many choices!