Friday, September 16, 2011

TGIF and Chimera

It's been a long week and I am very much looking forward to the weekend and catching up on my reading.  I am afraid that I have a few library books that need to be read before they are due as well as the giant stack of TBRs that are teetering in several different rooms.  I try to read the previous books in a series if the one that I am supposed to review is part of a sequence that I have not read.  Easier said than done sometimes but often gives much more insight than the brief synopses or offhand explanations that are often confusing if one doesn't know the entire series.

One example of the importance of being familiar with the series can be seen if one reads Rob Thurman's Basilisk without reading Chimera first.  Thurman always writes somewhat uncomfortable scenarios but not to the point where I have to stop reading.  Her talent lies in her ability to make a disturbing character personable and appealing.  She sucks you in with the first paragraph and chews you up and spits you out still wishing for more.  Chimera introduces the Korsak brothers, Stefan and Lukas, who were separated 10 years in the past when Lukas was kidnapped.  Scions of an infamous Russian mobster, the two are reunited after Stefan has devoted the intervening years to finding out what has happened to his younger sibling.  The young man that he rescues has no memory of their history and has been honed into a weapon but is ill-prepared to exist in a normal life.  Stefan wants to atone for what he sees as his culpability in all that happened to his brother but they each have secrets and baggage that have to be addressed.  A startling ending which makes me quite happy that I already have the next in the series to read!

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