Nalini Singh - Caressed By Ice & Mine To Possess

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Another two Nalini Singh reviews. As a note, I'm wondering if multiple books in a series count as individual books for the '50 books in a year' challenge, or if they should just count as one? I'm feeling slightly guilty, as I'm working my way through this series quite quickly and it sort of feels like cheating.

If anyone wants to let me know, that would be lovely.

Anyway, on to the reviews!

I'm reviewing the third and fourth books in Nalini Singh's changeling-psy series of paranormal romance novels. In these two books I found my favourite couple so far (in terms of believability and variation from the romance standard) and the best developed and most complex plot. Unfortunately the couple were in one book and the plot was in the other,.

First of all, Caressed By Ice, which is, I have to admit, my favourite of the changeling-psy books so far. It was slightly lacking in narrative plot (there was an exploration of the back plot and a reveal of another plot featuring a rebellion from inside the psy structure, but these didn't go as far as they could), but did have my favourite couple so far. And for once there was no hyper-macho were-leopard male lead! No, instead the romance was between Brenna - the werewolf who was kidnapped and tortured in 'Slave to Sensation' - and Judd Lauren - a renegade Psy who is still under the effect of Silence.

I have to admit, I loved this relationship. OK, so there was still some of the traditional tough man romance hero to Judd, but he wasn't nearly as alpha male as either Lucas or Vaughn in the previous books, and the balance of power in this relationship felt very different to me. Brenna needs Judd because he's someone who doesn't baby her or fuss over her after her experience with the psy serial killer - he pushes her towards being more independent. Judd responds to Brenna in a sexual way, and the interplay between that the psychological conditioning he has experienced as a psy is really interesting to me. The chemistry between them also felt quite real to me, and it was very cool to get away from the Dark River clan to the Snow Dancers.

I just wish more had been done with the uber-plot world events. Not a lot happened, and the sub-plot, which featured someone trying to kill werewolves in the same manner as the psy serial killer just fell kinda flat.

And from there to 'Mine To Possess'. First of all, the positives. The plot in this was dramatically better than the plots in either of the previous two books. This book actually felt narrative driven, as 'Slave to Sensation' was, and I really was interested in the development of the characters.

However, at the centre was the romance between two of the characters, as normal, and this one did not grab me at all. In theory it was a nice dynamic - Clay (another Dark River sentinel) meets up with Talin, a girl he knew as a child and went to jail over the killing of her abusive foster father. I liked the idea of this pairing, but in reality it never really seemed to flow. The couple went from 'we've not seen each other since Tally was 9' to 'we are acting like a mated couple' too damn quickly for my liking, and a lot of the tension between them felt really inconsistently written. Talin's reasons for pretending she was dead for years to hide from Clay seemed to change every couple of chapters, and it didn't help that I frankly found Clay to be a bit of a jerk at times. OK, so he's been obsessing over Tally for years. That doesn't mean it's reasonable for her to come back into his life, and within seconds he's snapping at Faith (who is apparently a good friend of his) to back off out of his life because Tally is damn possessive. I also found the whole 'obsessing over a girl he hadn't seen since she was 9' thing kinda creepy.

I suspect this romance also failed to grab me because I feel like I've rather spent enough time with hyper-macho possessive were-leopards. I've now read books featuring Lucas, Vaughn and Clay, and whilst there are differences between them (Lucas is in charge, Vaughn is feral, Clay is dark and brooding), they are pretty similar. Vaughn and Clay are particularly samey, to the extent that in the first book I couldn't really tell them apart.

I may be being harsh about 'Mine To Possess'. To be fair, the plot was really nice, and I think the romance could have been better. The basic premise isn't bad - I just think it was rather badly written and felt a bit choppy in places.

I'm still going to read the next one, and probably will read through to the conclusion of the series. The next hero is apparently Dorian, who is a Dark River sentinel, but has managed to stick in my head as different to Vaughn-Clay, so we'll see how that goes!

Whilst I'm posting - I'm looking for new cook books. Ideally not curries, or similar, as my partner is Sri Lankan and so we probably are fairly good for curry type recipes. Other than that, I'm totally open minded. Obviously, written by PoC, if possible. I only mention this as the userinfo actually states that cookery books are valid books to add to the 50 book challenge.

Comments

[chipmunk-planet.livejournal.com]

I got Turn Up the Heat with G. Garvin (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0696233940?ie=UTF8&tag=wecaaldr-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0696233940) the Christmas before last, and I really like it. There are some wonderful recipes on there. The book comes with a DVD in back which I haven't watched yet, but I'm assuming is demonstrating some of the techniques he uses in his recipes.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Oooh...that looks interesting. It says words like 'simple' in it, which is always safest when unleashing me in the kitchen.

Thank you!

[rydra_wong]

As a note, I'm wondering if multiple books in a series count as individual books for the '50 books in a year' challenge, or if they should just count as one?

I have no idea if there's an official ruling, but so far everyone seems to be counting multiple books in a series (Marjorie Liu's Dirk and Steele books, Tobias Buckell's novels, Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis books, etc.) as separate books.

I'm feeling slightly guilty, as I'm working my way through this series quite quickly and it sort of feels like cheating.

There's definitely not a rule that you have to be suffering for it to count *g*.

vassilissa had a great post about that here -- about the initial assumption that a lot of us have that reading books by POC should be hard work and challenging and a duty, and realizing that no, reading fun books counts too.

And, you know, if you reach 50 ahead of schedule, you are allowed to read more *g*.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I totally identify with that post, you know. I suspect it's a really easy trap to fall into when you start something like this - somehow convincing yourself that this is Big and Worthy and so will involve reading Big Worthy books. And yeah - that is RaceFail.

*ponders*

I think a part of it has been me convincing myself that being white and trying to do anything anti-racist is all about being uncomfortable - facing home truths, dealing with white privilege, etc. Whereas, this challenge hasn't been. It's been me finding lots of lovely books, by fantastic authors and getting to write book reviews.

It's just been fun.

[rydra_wong]

I totally identify with that post, you know.

Oh, me too.

somehow convincing yourself that this is Big and Worthy and so will involve reading Big Worthy books. And yeah - that is RaceFail.

See, that can be your first uncomfortable learning experience! *g*

For me, a lot of the revelations last year were quite subtle -- e.g., "Okay, since I'm having huge amounts of fun reading all these great books, why have I not picked any of them up before now?" Especially since there were some I'd heard of but somehow never quite got round to checking out, or some I'd seen in bookstores but somehow never quite got round to buying ...

I thought I'd already been reading fairly diversely, but I realized that apparently I hadn't, because just this tiny bit of conscious effort to read more by POC turned up all these great authors.

So -- it does have the potential to bring up all sorts of things, I think. But not because it's not fun!

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Anything by Madhur Jaffrey is good. She has some "quick and easy" type books. Worlds of the East Vegetarian Cooking was my first cookbook by here, and I adore it. If one is Western and bad at cooking, learning from non-Western cookbooks actually makes things much easier, because they tend to explain the techniques in more detail. She is worth reading cover to cover; most of her recipes have little stories attached. I love the stories.

Barbara Tropp is not a PoC, but her Chinese cookbook (Modern Art of Chinese Cooking) is extremely well-regarded and super-fun to read. She particularly mentions Irene Kuo's cookbook; it's not quite as fun to read as some, but the recipes are pretty good. However, Kuo's book is older and has more, um, suspicious substitutions; it's from a time when you were lucky to find soy sauce outside of the big Chinatowns :).

Serve the People by Lin-Liu was mentioned here a while back and has been sitting on my "read this already it is overdue at the library" shelf for a while. :) It has recipes for amazing things, though I do not yet know if the recipes themselves are amazing.

Vatch's Thai Street Food is fun, though I have not made more than a couple of recipes. I remember liking them.

I understand that Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art is the standard for Japanese cookbooks in English. I own it, but have not read it.

If that is not enough to get you started, I have lots more at home!

[sanguinity]

Have you browsed through the "food/cooking" tag on the comm yet?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Oooh...I didn't even realize that was there. Trust me to fail totally at using LJ.

Thank you!