Vanessortia

Love At First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi

I have never truly done spooky reads in the month of October, but this year I wanted to start making that a new tradition for myself. If you frequent my blog you will see that I did get a bit sidetracked this month, but I finally got around to reading a book that was on theme for the month. I don’t know if this genre is a large one, or if it even exists, but I am going to say that this book falls in the cozy, spooky, romance category.

Rosemary can see and interact with ghosts, the gift runs in her family. Not many people know, just those closest to her, and her ability doesn’t have much of an effect on her daily life. Rosemary has become a successful writer, one of her books was picked up by a production studio and is being made into a movie. She agrees to go to England at the request of the production company so they can pick her brain while filming, but she mostly goes because she believes that the lead role has been miscast and she wants to see if there is anything she can do to change the director’s mind. Ellis, a world famous movie star, has a resume full of starring roles in action flicks, and personal life to match. Rosemary doesn’t think that the tall, tan, and handsome Ellis will be able to convincingly play the thin and reserved male character from her story. Rosemary’s ability to see ghosts does come into play later in the book.

I was anticipating the spice to be spicier since a major plot point is Rosemary going on and on about how badly she wants a man to dominate her. Ellis is honestly a very respectful and playful dom, which I appreciated. But with the way Rosemary reminisced about her disappointing doms of the past I was expecting the intimate moments between them to go a little bit harder, a lot harder actually. It was mostly verbal domination, making her follow his orders, and not so much the hardcore physical domination that I feel like most people would associate with the word. In other words, I feel like I was a little bit misled. I expected fire and I got an electric blanket that was on the lowest setting.

So the book ended up being a cozy ghost story with romance on the side. I would read it again, it was pleasant enough. But now that I know that it is a little bit vanilla in the spice department I will only reach for it when I am in the mood for something that is lower in intensity. I would say that this is a good book for someone who is curious about the romance genre, I would call it introductory level in regards to spice.

Quicksilver by Callie Hart

Fiction

I decided that I needed to read this book to see if it was appropriately hyped. I also felt like I had been missing a little bit of magic in my life lately. While I have been reading a lot of romantic fiction over the past few months, they have all been realistic romantic fiction, no magic, fae, witches, vampires, no other worldly creatures of any kind. I was missing stories that involved intertwining the supernatural with romance, with adventure and intrigue on the side, and I was hopeful that this would provide me with what I was longing for. It did.

Saeris lives in a ward called The Third in the city of Zilvaren. The planet is dry and hot, with two suns that never set, making water more valuable than gold. The people of The Third are expected to survive on a daily ration of the smallest portion of the filthiest water out of all the residents in the entire city. Life is hard, so much so that Saeris steals cleaner water from another ward, as well as other things, to ensure her and her younger brother’s survival. The story begins with her taking something that is a little bit too valuable, leading the queens guard to invade her ward, something they usually avoid at all costs due to rumors of The Third being full of disease. After being captured by the guards and interrogated by the queen, she is sentenced to death. But something strange happens after Saeris is stabbed, and after passing out from her wounds she wakes up cold for the first time in her life.

Kingfisher, the fae male who arose from a pool of liquid silver as Saeris lay dying, returns to the kingdom of Yvelia after a decades long disappearance. Everyone has questions, where was he, why was he gone for so long, and why does he have a human female with him? But most importantly, how did he travel though the quicksilver pool when they have been sealed shut for over a thousand years? Saeris, it turns out, has the ability to unfreeze the pools, she just needs to learn how to do it with purpose rather than through a near death experience. Overnight, she becomes the most valuable being in the realm, an alchemist. Thought to have become extinct, she has the gift to activate the pools which makes travel between realms possible. And the fae of this realm desperately need to travel elsewhere to trade goods so that they can win and end the war that has been going on for centuries.

This novel really had everything that I was looking for, and I am optimistic that it will end up turning out to be a very good series. There were mystical creatures, but not too many that it was overwhelming, conflict, war, excellent tension between Saeris and Kingfisher, which lead to amazing intimate scenes, and a good overall plot. I placed a lot of post its throughout the book to mark things that I thought were important or bits of information that I found a little tricky to understand and knew I would want to go back to. I found that the way the curse was described made it harder to understand than it should be and I ended up reading that passage a few times. There is also a lot of information about swords and the magic they used to have as well as who they belonged to versus who owns them now, it was a lot.

I do appreciate that the author put a pronunciation guide for both people and places at the beginning of the book, but I found myself not caring so much about that as I did the map. Not all of the places mentioned in the novel are marked on the map, so you do have to try and estimate where they are based off of where the characters are coming from and where they are headed. I don’t know why, and I am sure I am not the only one, but I like to trace the path that the characters travel along. Even though we are only in Zilvaren for a short period of time, Saeris’ home city does not have a map at all. While I like to think that I have a very active imagination and was able to create a basic picture in my mind of what all the wards surrounding the central palace looked like, a map would have been nice. Maybe we will get one in the upcoming second book. An expanded or improved map of Yvelia and the rest of that realm would be nice too.

To bring this post to an end I just want to mention that I did originally buy the book in paperback, because it was less expensive. But after reading it and enjoying it I decided to buy the hardcover so that it will look nice next to the copy of Brimstone, which I preordered almost immediately after finishing Quicksilver. So I will say, if you enjoy fantasy, go ahead and buy the hardcover because you will enjoy this series and want to have a nice, matching set.

The Wish Giver by Bill Brittain

Banned, Fiction, Short Story

This was a very short story that I read during my lunch break one day. I am going to say it is a children’s book because it was a very easy read and it took a very short amount of time to finish it. It takes place in a small town in the country during an annual festival. An unusual man shows up, sets up his tent, and waits for those curious enough to see what he is all about. He says he grants wishes, any wish you want, so of course the majority of people don’t believe him. But four people do end up in his tent, and he promises that he will grant each of them one wish in exchange for a very low one time payment. They are all extremely skeptical, but when these characters all find themselves frustrated, they make their wish. None of them believe their wishes will happen, but they most certainly do, just not exactly in the ways they had hoped.

If you aren’t a big reader and want something simple to ease your way into it, this is something I might suggest. Or if you enjoy children’s stories, I would say this is right up your alley. And if you read this story and enjoy it I believe that the author has many more stories like it. I did originally buy this as part of my banned books collection, in an effort to protect stories that certain groups of people want to disappear. I am glad to have bought something that is forbidden in certain circles, but I was finding it really difficult to figure out why this short children’s story was even on some lists.

I ended up having to do a quick online search to find out why this was a banned book because I really couldn’t see any obvious reason. The reason ended up having to do with what is written on the first two pages, the mention of witches, witchcraft, magic, and ‘creatures of the darkness’. Although magic is a big theme in this story, witches, witchcraft, and mystical creatures are never mentioned again. This very short book is basically a collection of stories that teach a lesson we have all heard before, be careful what you wish for. But apparently just those words, witch, witchcraft, and magic, are enough for some people to find offense. The story as a whole doesn’t have any witches performing witchcraft or magic. I find it silly that just the printed word alone can make certain groups want to keep this book out of schools or even public libraries.

Sex on the Brain by Deborah Blum

Nonfiction

Even though this book was first published in 1997, I found that a lot of the information inside was still relevant and held nearly thirty years later when I decided to read it. I have found that you can tell a book was well researched, and that the theories the author chose to discuss were founded on solid science, when the science is still being studied in the present and the theories are still being pursued. And that was certainly the case here.

This book touches on many different topics that relate to the biological differences between men and women. There are reasons why we are wired the way that we are. Some traits we have carried with us are no longer necessary, think about the useless appendix, and other traits have always been and may always be required for us to function. The author discusses such topics as why is morning sickness still a thing, gossip, the mystery of monogamy, the evolutionary theory as to why it is advantageous for all species to have homosexuality, and the reason why some hetersexual men get both angry and jealous of homosexual male couples. Really, this book has it all. There are two particular topics that I wanted to discuss with some depth as they are topics that I am always drawn to. And I chose these in particular because the author was discussing them back in 1997, and they are still important bits of science that those in the field are still considering today.

The author seemed to have really good intuition into what the future holds genetically in a passage discussing chromosomes. The X chromosome has most of the genetic code on it, around two thousand genes, whereas the Y chromosome has less than eighty. It is widely known that it is the male’s genetic material which determines the gender of the child, women’s eggs are all X chromosomes and male sperm have either an X or Y chromosome. The Y chromosome mostly just exists as a signal to make the embryo into a male human. Without the Y chromosome, we would all be female. Scientists are currently trying to determine if a female’s bone marrow could be used to fertilize an egg, thus creating a human with the genetic contribution of two women rather than a woman and a man. If this is something that can be done, males will eventually become obsolete. Being a man does put you at a disadvantage genetically, and if in the future more people are more concerned as a society about producing a healthy child, then they might not want the option of having a male. If you are a woman and you inherit a bad gene on one X chromosome, but a healthy version of the same gene on the other X chromosome, you get the good one. The same is not always true for a man, if that gene does not exist on the Y chromosome then you get stuck with the bad gene. There are many disorders that are more prevalent in men for this reason. I found this extremely fascinating.

Another topic that always captures my interest is body size in relation to male genital size. In species where the males are physically much larger than the females, you will see very small genitals. When the females and males are similar in body size, the genital size becomes more proportionate to that of the body. The topic was touched only briefly, but it was explained in easy to understand terms here. But I always find the theoretical discussions on this topic insightful from an evolutionary standpoint. I enjoy pondering the why behind the designs of animal forms.

Besides the very entertaining biological content, I was really amused with the names of some of the people in this text. I found it hilariously coincidental that several people had names that suited their careers. John Wingfield, an avian biologist, and Marc Breedlove, a behavioral endocrinologist who studies hormones, just to name two. And as I have said a few times before, a non fiction book, regardless of the topic, is always much more pleasant to read when it is well written. The author had a sense of humor and was relatable. I like it when an author adds tidbits from their life that go hand in hand with what they are writing about.

God of War by Rina Kent

Uncategorized

I finally made it to the end of the Legacy of Gods series. I am relieved and already looking for my next fantasy/romance novel to get obsessed over. I am already thinking about what I am going to read next because even though this series was decent, I only truly loved one out of the six books. The other five featured my least favorite trope, and reading the same story, albeit with minor changes to the story line, five times in a row, was exhausting and tiresome.

Ava has been a background character for five novels running, but we finally get to learn what her story and tragedy is. She has serious mental health issues, a form of psychosis, of which started to affect her around puberty. She inherited her diagnosis from her grandmother, so her parents recognized what was happening to her when it started, and she has been in therapy and medicated since. However, Ava has never been the most diligent when it comes to taking her medication, and paired with her love of drinking and taking recreational drugs, her treatment plan isn’t always as effective as it should be. She drinks, takes drugs, and parties to excess not only to escape her psychosis, but because of heartbreak. When Ava was seventeen she confessed to longtime family friend Eli, cousin of her roommate Glyndon, that she was in love with him and had been for a long time. He rejected her, brutally, and since then she has been doing everything she can to prove to him that she doesn’t love him anymore, hates him in fact, while simultaneously ruining any chance he has at a relationship with any other woman.

Ava gets far too out of control one night, she gets in her car after leaving a club incredibly inebriated, gets into an accident, and the next time we see her she is waking up in a hospital. She assumes she has spent a few days in a coma, but it has actually been months. And there is another twist to go along with that one.

This book I did actually get very much into, as I enjoy reading about psychology and psychoactive drugs as a hobby. It was fun for me to try to figure out what exactly was going on at the same time that Ava was, trying to piece together what had happened in her life during the lapses in her memory. Everyone around her knows the truth about what happened between the accident and when she wakes up, some more than others, but no one wants to tell her for fear of upsetting or angering her. Everyone thinks it’s best if she never remembers the truth, or if the memories return on their own. It was part mystery, part thriller, part dark romance, which is a very alluring combination.

If you don’t mind the virgin trope, this is a top tier series for you to get into. You’ll get five novels absolutely focused on it. If you can’t stand it, I would not recommend it, you’ll be groaning about it the entire time like I was. God of Fury is still and will always be my favorite novel in this series, it had the right balance. For fun, and because I wanted to see if everything was cohesive, I created a timeline of the major events that occur over the course of the six novels. Each book is stated as being a standalone, but you hear and read about the same characters in each book and the first five novels all happen within months of each other. It may not be entirely correct, but I did my best based on periods of time mentioned by the main characters, content clues, and comparing the narratives between books. Take a peek if this interests you, I have the pdf at the end of this post, and I hope you enjoy it.

Legacy of Gods timeline Download