Review: 7 Against the Dark: Urban fantasy boxed set

Seven Against the Dark: Seven Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Series Starters by Annie Bellet

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My very favorite thing in this book—which is full of delightful details—is in Kate Danley’s book “Maggie for Hire” about a “magical tracker in L.A. who carries a silver stake her sister had engraved for her at Things Remembered. I loved that detail and I very much enjoyed the story with its magical objects and deep dark secrets.

Danley’s book is only one of seven novels in this bundle and every single one of the books is a lot of fun to read. Annie Bellet’s “Justice Calling” gives a star-making entrance to its sexy tiger-shifter Aleksei Kirov “Justice of the Council of Nine” but it’s the author’s setting—Wyld, Idaho—that elevates the book from its genre. The small town where the heroine runs a comic book and tabletop gaming store is “the shape-shifter capital of the west,” and we can visualize exactly the kind of town it might be. The heroine, jade Crow, has a sense of humor and her reaction to Aleksei is a deadpan, “So, you know, not your average comic book or tabletop gaming enthusiast.”

There’s another heroine named Jade in the book, Jade Calhoun, the empath at the heart of “Haunted on Bourbon Street.” Her description of a “craft shop” run by Bea puts us right in the center of magical New Orleans, and Deanna Chase, like the other writers in the bundle, gives a lot of weight to sense of place.

This is true even when the “place” is one the author made us, as Anthea Sharp did in “Feyland.” Her writing is drop-dead gorgeous, near poetry at times, and lines like, “She smelled of stars and roses,” convey the magical quality of the Dark Queen of the Faeries.

Christine Pope’s “Darkangel” is also firmly rooted in its sense of place, and provides a practical look at the issue of a witch finding her consort. (Let’s just say Angela McAllister has to kiss a lot of frogs before she finds the literal man of her dreams.) One of the hallmarks of this book—like the others in the collection—is the strong sense that there’s a whole world contained in the pages of the book. Angela’s witch clan has rules and taboos and allies and enemies, and all of this is worked out beautifully.

Ditto for Helen Harper’s “Bloodfire” with its casual scattering of paranormal creatures into the mix. (A group of shape-shifters avoids admonishment because there are “water-wights terrorizing pleasure boats on the Thames.”)

I also enjoyed Colleen Gleason’s vampire hunter historical urban fantasy “The Rest Falls Away” with its Jane Austen world (so much better than “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”) The book gave us not just a sense of place but also a sense of time.

Boxed sets are great introductions to writers and series. I’d only read one of these writers before, but now that I’ve read the others, I’ll be back for more.




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Yay! A new book from Terry McMillan!

I Almost Forgot About You is coming out on June 7. Can't wait.

Love Paranormal and Urban Fantasy? Here's something JUST FOR YOU!

For some reason, it seems to be the season of the boxed sets. This one, featuring the first books in seven paranormal and urban fantasy series is free wright now. Free. Who doesn't love free reads? Get it on Amazon here.

A Valentine Witch for Valentne's Day

I'm a big fan of the novelette-sized story--I've written a whole series of novelette-sized fairy tale retellings--and I've been enjoying the paranormal romance novelettes from writer Shay Roberts. This one is set in North Carolina, where I went to college, and he totally nailed the perculiar vernacular of the local barrier islands. (Ocracoke Island was always one of my favorite places, but the local accent is hard to decipher. It's said to be very close to what Elizabethan English sounded like.)

I reviewed Valentine Witch (see my review here), and hope that the writer will come back to the setting and the characters later.

Interview with Jolie Du Pré

Author/editor/blogger Jolie Du Pré  is the creative force behind For Love of the Vampire, a boxed set of paranormal romances launching today with novellas from eight writers including herself. She stopped by Kattomic Energy to talk about vampires, books in general, and the challenges of the writing life

Welcome Jolie!

Who’s your favorite on-screen vampire?

Damon Salvatore of the The Vampire Diaries!

If you could be any paranormal creature, what would you be?

I would be a vampire!  They’re strong, sexy, and they live forever!

Do you have a writing ritual? For example: Do you have a set page/word goal of writing a day? Do you write on your birthday? Do you ever work on two or more projects at once?

I write with a set number of words per day.  Plus, I always give myself a deadline. 

Do you have a favorite among the books you’ve written?

My favorite of the Pierce series is book 4.  I love the sex scene I created.  LOL!

What are you working on now?

Actually, I’m working on books for a new pen name.  They are not paranormal related.

What’s the last good book you read? Or:  What’s on your TBR pile?

Prosperity for Writers: A Writer's Guide to Creating Abundance by Honoree Corder. She gives simple, yet effective solutions for getting you back on the right track, mentally, for achieving your goals as a writer.

Interview with paranormal author Olivia Leighton

 FOR LOVE OF THE VAMPIRE, a boxed set of paranormal romance novellas will be published tomorrow and  author Olivia Leighton, whose work is featured in the set, dropped by to talk about vampires, and books and writing. Welcome Olivia!

Who’s your favorite on-screen vampire?

Hands down Elijah from the Originals.

If you could be any paranormal creature, what would you be?

I like a lot of characteristics of a wolf shifter, but nothing beats the draw of being a vampire to me.  They are cat-like in a way - sexy, stalk the night, can move silently, etc.

Do you have a writing ritual? For example: Do you have a set page/word goal of writing a day? Do you write on your birthday? Do you ever work on two or more projects at once?

When I sit down, I try to write as much as I can in two to four hours, then I’ll go back and edit/add to/take away from.  Since I have a full-time job and a boyfriend who works odd hours, I try to fit my writing in around those two things.  If that means I write on my birthday, so be it.  I enjoy writing anyway, so it would be a good way to spend my birthday!  And yes, I have several projects, but it’s normally in the form of working on book covers.  (I’m also a professional graphic designer.)

Do you have a favorite among the books you’ve written?

Honestly, I think the Vampire and the Owl is my favorite.  I like the thought of being a snowy owl shifter, and I’m quite fond of the town of Gilmer, TX which the story is set in.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a spin-off tale from Unbroken.  This one will focus on Daniel Collins (the vampire) and the woman seeking revenge on him from changing her back in the 70s.

What’s the last good book you read? Or:  What’s on your TBR pile?

- The last good book… It would have to be Champion by Mary Lou.  Funny thing… I read mainly YA dystopian tales even though I write PNR.  I have a shelf full of books, one side contains books I read and the other books I need to read.  The read stack features books like Champion and Angel Fall.  The TBR stack includes Young World and Hemlock.

The usual vampire in PNR seems to be a pale white straight male (whether sparkly or not) and a lot of readers seem to like it that way. Do you venture outside the paranormal norm with your characters?

 I don’t like to make my paranorms stray too far from their cookie-cutters, but I do like to put my own twist on things.  For example, my vampires can be killed with steaks, but they need to be steaks crafted from petrified wood.  UV rays can still burn them, but if they have a special tattoo, it protects them and they can be out during the day.

Interview with Christine Pope

Best-selling author Christine Pope has new book out in her paranormal romance series "The Sedona Files."  I thought this would be a good time to ask her a few questions.

Falling Angels is the next-to-last book (oh no!) in your “Sedona Files” series. When you wrote the first, Bad Vibrations, did you know you were going to chronicle the second generation of your characters?

Frankly, I didn’t even know it was going to be a series. Back then, I really didn’t know what I was doing, and thought writing standalone books was the way to go (hint: it isn’t, at least in the vast majority of cases). But then I began to think how about how I could expand that one book into a series, and started working out the bigger-picture arc of the alien conspiracy/invasion that’s always going on in the background (and sometimes the foreground) of the books. As for the second generation, after I was done writing Angel Fire, I realized I really wanted to tell Grace’s story once she was an adult, and it sort of fell into place that I’d create a second trilogy that takes place approximately twenty-five years after the end of Angel Fire. So that’s why I wrote books for the daughters of the heroines of the first trilogy: Grace (Kara from Desert Hearts’ daughter), Callista (Kirsten from Falling Angels’ daughter), and Taryn, the daughter of Persephone from Bad Vibrations. 

Check out the trailer for The Sedona Files:

You’ve got several established series out there—the Witches of Cleopatra Hill, the Latter Kingdom books, the Gaian Consortium stories—but it seems like you’re always coming up with something new for your readers. What’s next?

The Gaian series has been ended (although there’s a prequel short story coming out in an anthology in February 2016), and I’ll be wrapping up the Sedona Files and the Latter Kingdoms books this year as well. I do plan to write more Witches of Cleopatra Hill books, and more books in my Djinn Wars series. There are also plans in the works for a post-apocalyptic zombie trilogy to launch in late 2016. That one will still be romance, just darker and grittier than some of my other books (and no, the romance is NOT with the zombies). After that…I’ll have to see. I have concepts for several new paranormal romance series (and possibly another science fiction romance series), but none of those would launch until 2017 sometime.

In your PNR, you’ve had witches, ghosts, demons, and now zombies. Have you ever been tempted to write a vampire or werewolf story? 

Well…in a word, no. I know they’re popular, but I like writing about paranormal characters that haven’t been used as much. That said, the newest Latter Kingdoms book (which I’m writing at the moment) does actually include a version of one of those paranormal characters, but I don’t want to say much more about it than that.