*This title will be released on May 1, 2012*

Title: Silence Author:  Michelle Sagara Series: The Queen of the Dead #1 Cover Art: Cliff Nielsen Genre: Paranormal YA Excerpt: No Source: Publisher Reviewed by: Abigail Reading level: Ages 18 and up Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: DAW Hardcover (May 1, 2012) ISBN-10: 0756407427 ISBN-13: 978-0756407421   Sexual Content: N/A Rating: Okay – A few good points, but with significant flaws. Library/swap/borrow if you want.

---

Book Description: There's no place like home for the horrordays—unless you'd prefer a romantic midnight walk through a ghost-infested graveyard . . . or a haunted house candlelight dinner with the sexy vampire of your dreams. The (black) magical season is here—and whether it's a solstice séance gone demonically wrong with the incomparable Kim Harrison, a grossly misshapen Christmas with the remarkable Lynsay Sands, a blood-chilling-and-spilling New Year's with the wonderful Marjorie M. Liu, or a super-powered Thanksgiving with the phenomenal Vicki Pettersson, one thing is for certain: in the able hands of these exceptional dark side explorers, the holidays are going to be deliciously hellish!

My contribution to the anthology is called Six, and is set in Shanghai during Chinese New Year. Six is one of the deadliest women in China.  Trained from birth to be a warrior, a soldier for the secret police, she can handle anything, anyone.  Except for one man.  The only person who can save her soul.  If she can keep him alive.  -Marjorie M. Liu

Review:
Marjorie M. Liu's Six gives us in interesting eastern spin on vampires and necromancers during the Chinese New Year celebration. The story shifts back and forth from the perspective of Six, a Chinese government raised agent, and Joseph, a necromancer who helps Six when she is infected by a vampire.  When Six meets Joseph she has difficulty accepting the existence of the paranormal world and initially thinks he’s a terrorist, but she can’t deny what she sees and eventually agrees to help Joseph track down the terrorist cell of vampires. 

The world building was very strong here and the take on vampires as feeders of not blood but human souls was unique.  The real problem I had with this story with the character of Six.  She’s extremely distrustful and almost robotic in her behavior that I had difficulty accepting the life changing choices she made, specifically her romantic relationship with Joseph. I did not see them developing in that direction, and when they abruptly did, if felt false given Six’s detachment up until that point.

Sexual Content:
One or two (depending on how you look at it) graphic sex scenes

Click HERE to read an excerpt of "Six".

*Note* Six is part of the Holidays are Hell anthology.

---

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061239097
• ISBN-13: 978-0061239090

Long before I fell in love with Urban Fantasy as a genre, I had heard about Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series.  And I mean that in the most disparaging sense possible.   Every time I read something about the series it was sex, sex, and more sex. The word pornography was thrown around very casually.  And as I hate it when the plot of a book serves merely as a pretense for endless sex scenes that add nothing to the story/characters, I avoided this series much in the same way that I avoid blow drying my hair in the shower. 

That is, until I read an interview given by Laurell K. Hamilton in Writer's Digest  that asked her to respond to the too much sex criticism and her response changed my mind:

WD: YOU'VE BEEN CRITICIZED FOR HAVING TOO MUCH SEX IN THE ANITA BLAKE SERIES. HOW MUCH ATTENTION DO YOU PAY TO CRITICISM? DOES IT IN ANY WAY AFFECT HOW YOU WRITE THE NEXT BOOK?

LKH: It's funny. I've never had an American tell me they were bothered by the violence in my books. In Europe they're bothered by the violence and in America they're bothered by the sex. The only downside to the sexual content is losing younger readers. Sex isn't bad; it's a deity-given gift. But I initially never wanted to put sex on paper. There isn't a real sex scene until book five. At book six I finally realized my main character was going to have sex with the man she was dating. I initially wanted to take the 1940s pan to the sky, but the camera hadn't flinched in five books. I didn't want to do it, but I thought, what does this say about me? I don't mind writing violence but flinch at writing sex.  (Click here to read the interview in its entirety).

What?  Not a single sex scene in the first five books?  This was not the Anita Blake I had heard about.   And even then its hardly the ‘sleep with anything that moves’ reputation I’d been hearing about,  so I decided to pick up the first three books in the omnibus Club Vampyre  (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Omnibus: Guilty Pleasures,The Laughing Corpse and Circus of the Damned) and guess what? No sex. There is romance of course, but primarily these are UF mysteries (think hard-boiled), and fun ones at that.  Anita is tough with as-yet unrealized potential, Jean-Claude is alpha, the world is well imagined and realistic in a paranormal sort of way, and there appears to be juicy meta-narrative arc waiting to be told in subsequent books.  Add a touch of romance and its everything I love about urban fantasies. I am prepared to jettison this series if and when they begin to live up to (or should I say down to) their bad press, but in the meantime, Go Anita!

Book Blurb for Guilty Pleasures: Anita Blake may be small and young, but vampires call her the Executioner. Anita is a necromancer and vampire hunter in a time when vampires are protected by law--as long as they don't get too nasty. Now someone's killing innocent vampires and Anita agrees--with a bit of vampiric arm-twisting--to help figure out who and why. Trust is a luxury Anita can't afford when her allies aren't human. The city's most powerful vampire, Nikolaos, is 1,000 years old and looks like a 10-year-old girl. The second most powerful vampire, Jean-Claude, is interested in more than just Anita's professional talents, but the feisty necromancer isn't playing along--yet. This popular series has a wild energy and humor, and some very appealing characters--both dead and alive.

Book Blurb for The Laughing Corpse: Millionaire Harold Gaynor wants to hire Anita Blake to raise a 283 year old corpse. Of course this kind or animation would require a white goat - a human sacrifice. Anita doesn't do human sacrifice, but Harold does not want to take no for an answer. If that wasn't bad enough Dominga Salvador wants Anita to partner with her in the zombie business, but it involves keeping the human soul trapped inside the dead body. Anita wants nothing to do with Dominga or her work, but when the voodoo queen sends something foul and rotting in her window, it is all Anita can do to survive.

Book Blurb for Circus of The Damned: A group of vampires are murdering humans. That's nothing unusual, but they are killing them with multiple bites and draining them of blood. They will rise as vampires, but they will rise as beasts - animalistic vampires that will slaughter everything in their path.
As if that wasn't enough trouble, a master vampire has come to town and wants to make Anita his human servant. New Master of the City, Jean-Claude, wants to mark Anita to keep her safe, but Anita would rather die than become a slave to any vampire. With two master vamps fighting for Anita's soul, an undead war has begun.