Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Succubus Revealed plus perceptions and preconceptions

Richelle Mead’s latest tale is Succubus Revealed and it was a great addition to the inventive Georgia Kincaid series.  The oddity of a succubus who has reservations about the requirements of her job as well as a permanent relationship with a lover who is willing to give up portions of his life essence in order to be with her gives individuality to this series.  The conflicts between what Georgia is being told by her superiors and what is actually happening provides a mystery that her interesting coterie of friends (who include vampires, an angel, and a nephilim among others) decide they must investigate.  I’m a little disappointed in the ending but hopefully things will change somewhat in the next in the series.  My Goodreads review is at link 

I have been on a glut of paranormal romance for the past few months.  The genre has exploded and it is getting pretty difficult to keep up with my regular favorites while adding new authors who each have their own series underway.  Part of it is my own fault because I try (try, not necessarily succeed) to read at least some of the previous works in a particular series so that I am not reviewing the current novel completely lost when references are made to past events.  Many of the books can stand alone and are enhanced by having read the prequels and others are just so intricate that one is pretty much lost when thrown into the middle.  This desire for completion keeps my library requests pretty active so it’s a good thing that I have two different library systems to draw upon.  Then there are the other newly released books that I am not fortunate enough to capture for review that I try to catch as the library catalogues them.  I really hate to read a book after someone has eaten their snacks or even worse, smoked while reading it so I try hard to be first in line for new releases.  The drawback is that the books can’t be renewed because there is usually a long line waiting for them...which becomes an issue when there are several to be read within the two week or three week checkout time...and there are others to be reviewed.  Yes, sometimes I bite off more than I can chew! 


Please only continue if you are over 18 years old.


Ok, I have gotten off on a tangent (as usual).  I was starting to say that I had been reading a preponderance of paranormal romance (PNR) although I always have the occasional Regency Romance, Science Fiction or Suspense and plenty of Erotica in my TBR pile.  I tend to read relatively spicy Erotica but even though there has seemed to be an increase in the number of menage stories in my recent reading pile, I have shied away from strictly M/M or F/F stories because I wasn’t sure how comfortable I would be with those type of stories.  Looking at the selections of books awaiting reviews, I have noticed that there seem to be a large number of works characterized as GLBTQ (which I think stands for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual or queer) which reflect that the relationships are not traditional heterosexual ones and although they do get reviewed, sometimes it takes awhile.  So, gulp, I requested a M/M anthology.  I then attended a chat which featured several erotica authors and became interested in the works of a particular author who serendipitously had a work up for review in the next week which was listed as M/M.  It was a good story but had some inconsistencies which tend to irk me when I am reading so I contacted the author and asked if he would be interested in corrections.  He said yes and I sent them off but his response to them was so abrupt that I was a bit depressed because I really didn’t want to give offense, just to help improve the story.  The next day he actually contacted me again because he wanted to thank me for my review and told me that he had other things going on the day before that made him a bit abrupt.  I think I was worried about his reaction and he may have been worried that I was going to trash him in my review, especially since this was outside of my normal comfort zone.  Anyway, water under the bridge...

It is always a little dicey criticizing somebody’s hard work...and I am a terrible busybody...but when I wear my reader’s hat, if I run into too many errors, I sometimes give up and don’t finish (unless it’s a review book that I have to finish) but I certainly try not to read more books by the same author.  So I mean well and often my overtures are rebuffed but occasionally someone pays attention to my suggestions.  I even have the honor to have been specifically requested by a published author to help with his editing/proofreading for his next novel!

1 comment:

  1. That was a nice thing you did, I would think that an author would be happy someone took the time to let them know the mistakes so they could correct them.

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