The biggest question isn’t about whether or not the aliens took the cow, it’s why they took the cow…

Another book I love from an author I absolutely love…this one:

I admittedly waited until Tramps and Thieves came out the read this, but oh wow, this was so worth the wait! Rhys Ford is an absolutely phenomenal storyteller, and she tells them with such amazing style! The less-than-glittering landscape of Hollywood is right on par with the real-world visualness she gives all of her stories, but you know the other little bits she’s mixes in? All I can say is I should have expected the wink-and-nudge with a character with the last name Montoya, but even though I didn’t…what a clever and totally awesome surprise! And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how wonderful this story is!

And with that being said, I can also add that the two best parts of the book are plain and simply: Rook and Dante (<–that would be the Montoya here, in case you haven’t read this yet). Chemistry doesn’t even come close to what you can actually feel brewing between these two. They may sound steroetypical on the surface – good guy/bad guy, cop/thief, etc, etc – but it’s anything but the same-old-same-old when RF gets ahold a them. I mean yeah, Rook’s smart, and clever, and he knows it, and you know it – but it’s not something you’re told. It’s something you’re shown…

“You’ve broke more laws than the body has bones…”

“Broke yes, but once again, caught, no.”

…and that showing is one of thing RF truly excels at. And Dante, the other half this equation –

The problem with Dante Montoya was that he was good. Not the tip-toe through the forest, sing to the forest animals kind of good, but a more brutally real, honest-to-God, throw himself into the line of fire for someone he didn’t know kind…

…he’s not only the perfect foil for Rook, he’s the perfect match for him. Seriously, there is not a single thing forced about the two of them together, and when the cat-and-mouse ensues when cleverness tangles with a white knight like Dante – this is epic! And amazingly done. Nothing is over-the-top about either of them. There’s no stick up anyone’s behind, and no in-your-face attitudes from either of them, and not any show of  one or the other getting taken down a peg or two to create extra drama. They both know who they’re dealing with when it comes to other here, and the result will not only make you love them both, it makes for some just plain fun entertainment. Like when Dante handcuffed Rook to the bed to make sure he stayed behind –

“How long do you think it took him to get out of those?”

“Probably five minutes. If that. I also zip-tied the door from the outside…”

…or when Rook defended his decision to leave his hotel room –

“Cuervo, someone is trying to kill you…”

“Once. Tried to kill me once. And hey, maybe they were aiming for you. You know, a vengeful admirer from afar who caught me staring at your ass…”

…or that encounter with Rook’s grandpa in the hotel room –

“Want me to walk you down?”

“Did you miss the part where I don’t need any help? Besides, you’re banged up to ship. Goddamned cop can’t even take care of you. Don’t know why you even want him around.”

“Because he’s got a really nice dick and knows what to do with it. I plan on seeing what his ass is like next.” Rook winked at Dante’s exasperated groan. “What? It’s not like he doesn’t know I’m gay, Montoya…”

…and just as a side note I’ll add that I love it when Rook shortens that name to ‘Toya like he does sometimes…

…and when you mix people like those in a story like this…this is definitely a book you don’t want to miss! There’s a murder-mystery to solve here, with a surprising little twist in how it’s solved to boot, but it’s Rook and Dante and a cleverness in what RF blends into the story along with a healthy dose of humor, some very hot sexy times, and an ending that was pure genius that is going to make this a favorite! (and by ending I mean the last words – you don’t get more perfect than that!) Because Rhys Ford know how to tell you a story and entertain the daylights out of you at same time! So glad I have Tramps and Thieves already on deck, and I know I’ll be buying every other book in this series the instant they’re released! Just read this if you haven’t and you’ll see exactly why RF is one of my all-time favorite authors!

…and you’ll be just as glad as I am that this book isn’t a single! 

Have a great Sunday and…

…so many apologies that I don’t have a post to do this week! The real world invaded again – not family stuff this time though. This time it’s my own stuff going on, up to and including this morning’s visit by a very friendly and knowledgeable electrician (a Sunday visit at that!).

But hey – stuff’s fixed, the holiday is coming up, and I should have more time to get back to reading and other fun stuff this week! And if the world settles down enough, I can get back to posting more than once a week too! It looks like it’s starting to settle a bit at least so my hopes are up….

So again – so sorry for no book post this week!!!

But here’s hoping for a better week ahead! 

Have a great Sunday and….

(even without a book post I can wish you all that )

Yep, the last book of The Lord Jester’s Legacy, since the books are huge but the story is amazing…this:

But first thing’s first…isn’t that cover gorgeous??  The cover artist is Ravven (and there’s actually a website where you can see more, www.ravven.com) and this work…is absolutely beautiful! I could see this framed and hanging on wall…

…while the story inside is amazing in it’s own right. It’s historical fantasy, and the whole concept of the masks and the jesters and the All is really exceptionally painted throughout the entire series…but it’s the story itself that is so masterfully tangled that it’s hard to hate the people that did the bad things. At least, some of the people that did the bad things…

Gutter. The Gutter Rose. Thomas. All as one, and such an enigma at the beginning, such a complicated character to pin down as either good or bad, and one whose ending really couldn’t be anything but what it was. And like everything about this story, his was an ending that came with a touch of beauty in the tragedy –

“Let me show you where he fell…”

It was the high edge of a wild garden…not flat but more like a maze of a building made of trees and blossoms. The vines and arched stems clung to the columns, wrapping and tangling around them and each other…

[and] within that growth, roses…

Gutter really is one of the most tragically fascinating characters you’ll meet here, and EM Prazeman does a truly wonderful job of drawing out the same feelings in readers that Mark feels at that moment in story –

Somehow he’d forgotten how much he loved Gutter. How could he have forgotten?

– but he is far from the only fascinating character here. In a single word:  Gelantyne.

For anyone who hasn’t read these books, let me tell you that the title of this one is so extremely apt and clever. Gelantyne is the Innocence Mask. The most dangerous mask out there because when it takes over it’s wearer, it takes over it’s wearer – completely. And then Gelantyne does what needs to be done. For good in the end, but Gelantyne can be both ruthless and merciless in the doing  – and the mask is called Innocence because it shields the wearer from the brutality sometimes necessary when doing what needs to be done. In short, the end justifies the means. And *that* is why Gelantyne is so dangerous.

And the Silence? Well, it’s actually a warning, since Mark is a critical piece in this game –

Do not speak in the living world when you travel to the war…

…but it’s not as straightforward as you’d think (the ending of the last book, Confidante, explains the *why* of why Mark’s voice is dangerous). But the point of mentioning the title here? It’s because when Gelantyne’s Innocence and Mark’s Silence are put together… guys, that’s the whole crux of this story. They are the two things that are needed to bring an end to the threat. They are two most important pieces. So yeah…very clever title here.

Now like I said with the earlier posts about Masks and this series, there both is and isn’t a romantic element in the books. Oh, Mark loves and longs for love and admits to falling in love with Verai, but like the masks and plots and the jesters themselves, it’s not that simple. In fact, the ending of this books really isn’t all that concrete in the way of Mark’s romantic relationships. And that’s one thing that may or may not set well with readers of this series. Mark (or Lark, if you go by his Jester name) is actually in love with two people – one he can have and one he can’t. And the resolution to that really isn’t there.

“It won’t ever be easy between us. It never was, not at the beginning, and it never will be, even at the end. Perhaps especially at the end. But I will always, always love you.”

“And perhaps in the All, we won’t have to be apart anymore.”

Now the All is essentially where the souls go after death, and those words are from Mark – but not to Verai. So yeah, murky at best. Not a HEA romance for the romance-lovers out there. And then given that the the story ends on the same day Mark brings Verai home and the said two loves of Mark’s life meet?  All I can say is that it’s an ending that I’m sort of on the fence about – because I am one of those always rooting for a solid HEA to my romantic couples. There are three more books to this though (The Poisoned Past trilogy) so there’s still some things to be seen as to where this goes…

And honestly, like I said in the beginning, this isn’t a romance series to begin with so I really shouldn’t complain about that. What it is is a mesmerizing story of intrigue and secrets and plots and pending war set in the fascinating world EM Prazement created here. And still a definite read for those who love historical intrigue with a fantasy element and a host of truly fascinating characters. The plots are pretty intricate, but you’ll love watching all the threads unravel.

Have a great Sunday and…

The last book of an incredibly emotional, heartrending, and just plain wonderfully done series this week, and a rollercoaster of one at that…this one:

Now I read the first book of this series quite awhile ago, but did a re-read of it once I had the entire series in my hot little hands…and guys, after reading all four books back-to-back and seeing exactly what comes out at this story unfolds, it’s flat out amazing how deep this saga goes. There’s both history and mystery here, but *this* I didn’t see coming, and if there were any hints in the earlier books of just how brutally heartbreaking – and just how expansive – the whole truth would become, they were subtle enough to miss. Because where the story ends in Model Exposure is a far, far cry from where it begins with Model Citizen. And actually *that’s* one of the most amazing things about it – the road this series takes you down is incredible, but taking the story down that road never once seemed forced or manipulated. It was believable. Horrific at times, incredibly heartbreaking at others – but still believable. Such a beautiful job by Lissa Kasey with this!

And even moreso because the most riveting scenes of this story aren’t the action-packed ones. Oh, there *is* physical danger here of course (and Ollie *is* shot in this book after all), but no, the truly gripping parts are emotional ones. The pretty ones and the ugly. From those sweet, touching moments between Ollie and Kade –

“Stop,” he whispered. His lips touched my cheeks, kissing away tears I hadn’t realized I’d been crying.

“I’m trying,” I promised him.

“I know.”

– to the heartbreaking confession left by Nathan –

“…instead of being allowed to get to the embassy, we were taken to a camp of refugees…you and I were all we had left in the world…”

…to that horrifying scene where Kade thought he faced his father –

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do! It’s all you’ve ever done is tell me what to do! Control me. Lock me up. Torture me. It wasn’t enough that they burned me so bad when I was eleven that it took a dozen skin grafts to repair. Or that I had so much electricity shot into my head that my memories of my childhood are like swiss cheese..now you have to take Ollie from me…You evil son of a bitch…”

“…put the gun down…you promised you’d take care of me…hurting Ty is going to take you away…”

My father turned towards us now. Only now it wasn’t my father…It was Tyler…

…this series packs some serious emotional punches. And they hit hard. But it’s a beautiful thing to watch Ollie and Kade work through those punches too. And doing it by way of using one of the most beautifully done themes to paint the sheer depth of emotion in both Ollie and Kade was just incredible. That theme was Alice in Wonderland, and the relevance Lissa Kasey made between that story and this one is just…amazing. It’s the story Ollie loved as a kid and the one Kade read to him often as he grew up. They’re the tattoos Kade wears, including the Cheshire Cat and the Ollie-as-his-Alice on his back. It’s the scene from Kade’s scattered memories in both this book and the last one –

“I feel different sizes today,” I remarked to Nathan, who sat beside my bed.

“You look the same size,” he replied.

But I felt different in my skin. “I’m not quite sure who I am either. I’ve become Alice.”

“You’re not Alice. You’re the Mad Hatter.”

..and this one, from his memories and spoken in the real world…

“Am I mad?”

“Aren’t we all?”

…and especially this, from this book, from Ollie himself, with a white rabbit in his arms in an elaborate garden right from the novel itself –

“I know it’s not really you doubting me. There’s a lot in your head. I’ve been there. Still have days sometimes that I wallow in darkness, lost and confused, looking for a white rabbit to lead me to my Mad Hatter…but I’m not going anywhere unless it leads me to you…”

The relationship that LK built between Ollie and Kade is absolutely beautiful. Hard-won of course – the three books before this one and this one itself didn’t make anything easy for them – but they are about as solid as they come despite the history, the scars, and the good, bad, and ugly they’ve gone through to reach the end of Model Exposure. The result is definitely something for the ages…

And that actually includes the storyline as well as what is built between Ollie and Kade. Because the story here packs some serious punches of its own. Like I said, I wasn’t expecting anything regarding war and refugees when I started this series, and I certainly wasn’t expecting all of the horror and tragedies and secrets on both sides of them to become so relevant to the here and now. I wasn’t expecting Micah, or expecting Will to be playing his part on one side either, or expecting Jacob to actually become such a wonderful side character….

And I wasn’t expecting one heartbreak to be left unresolved by the story’s end. Not overlooked, just something there isn’t a healing for. The reason for Nathan’s suicide. Oh, it’s explained. And it’s fully realistic…but what it was that had led to it…what he believed to be true the moment he took his life – and us knowing he believed it and knowing no one had had the chance to tell him he was lied to, that he didn’t fail in his goal to keep Ollie safe – that’s the most heartbreaking moment of all. That’s the moment that will bring real tears. Because that moment hurt. And it was supposed to.

But don’t think this book and the series as a whole is *all* doom and gloom. Yes, there’s a lot of changes that happen throughout the story, and nobody is the same as they were at the start of the series, but there’s some lighter moments that will make you smile and some actual physical danger to keep things lively, not to mention some steamy scenes that fit just perfectly amid everything else. And there isn’t a side character in this whole series I didn’t like (well, except for Kade’s family, but they’re not a part of Ollie and Kade’s future so screw ’em). But the real side characters – Tomas, Ty, Jacob, Britney, Will, Micah, Sophie, Newt (he’s the cat, by the way) – yeah, there’s a bunch of them, but they never hit a wrong note, and more importantly, they never take over the story.

And this story is one you are definitely going to want to read. One of the other things Lissa Kasey did that just came across wonderful was alternating the POV from book to book. Telling the story from Ollie’s POV in book 1, Kade’s in book 2, Ollie again in book 3, and finally Kade again in this one. Such a wonderful way to understand what is going on with both of them first-hand, to understand what each of them are going through while they try to be there for the other. Not all series work being told like this…but this one? It’s perfect. You will need to read it in order of course (there’s really no away around it without missing some very important details), but reading it something you’re not going to regret. No question you’ll feel as wrung out as Ollie and Kade by the time they finally reach the altar –

I frowned at the SUV…even parked off into the the corner of a private pay-to-enter lot it had been keyed…

“At least [it] didn’t get blown up…”

Ollie winked at me. “Nope. I just blew you world in it.”

– but you’ll be smiling when you reach that moment too.   An amazing series you don’t want to miss! And you can find it at Dreamspinner Press 

Have a great Sunday and…