>Favorites Books & Authors<
[Mercedes Lackey | L J Smith | Laurell K Hamilton | Katherine A Applegate | Jean M Auel | Dyan Sheldon | Susan Krinard | Anne Bishop]
Mercedes Lackey
I especially love Mercedes Lackey's Velgarth(Valdemar) series and her stand-alone retellings of fairytales. Curling up with
The Black Gryphon and a bowl of chocolate ice cream is actually my idea of the perfect way to spend a summer day.
Some of her books are: The Serpent's Shadow - her version of Snow White. Note: I absolutely hate the Snow White fairytale but ML's version is so original and engrossing.
By The Swordis about a female mercenary in Valdemar(actually, she doesn't go to Valdemar until the end of the book).
Firebird is a retelling of a Russian fairytale. This book is so funny! But I'm not too thrilled with the ending. Mercedes Lackey has many, many more fantasy novels but I don't feel like listing all of them.
L. J. Smith
I love the concept of the Night World and the soul mate principle. And the characters are so amazing - heroic and tough yet real(*smiles* at least, as real as vampires and witches can get). I adored the psychic web and its members in the Dark Visions trilogy. But, I'm not that fond of her Vampire Diaries trilogy plus one. It's not as different from all the other vampire crap out there.
L.J. Smith's books are: Night Of The Solstice and
Heart Of Valor, a duology about these children who have to help the imprisoned sorceress Morgana(of Authurian legends) because she's the only one who can prevent this world from being invaded by nasty fairies.
The Forbidden Game trilogy - a girl and her friends are kidnapped by an ancient but gorgeous Shadowman who wants them all to play a very dangerous game(several actually). If they lose, he gets to keep Jenny.
The Dark Visions trilogy - five psychic high school seniors are recruited by a rich old man with sinister plans for them. I'm not giving a very good idea of what it's really like but it is very interesting. The five of them(all very different, Gabriel is on parole for murder, Kait has never had any friends, Rob had an accident and can't see the connection between sex and girls(until he meets Kait), Anna would make a saint look like a psycho and Lewis is the average guy. And all of them are connected mentally after a ... situation involving their powers.
The Vampire Diaries - popular girl sets her sights on the hot new guy who turns out to be a tortured vampire with an equally hot but bad brother. Their ancient enemies follow them to the quiet little town. *yawns* I really don't like the VD books.
The Secret Circle trilogy - girl moves back to her mother's hometown of New Salem. There's the really weird clique that rules the school, some of them torments Cassie terribly but some of them become her new friends. Then she finds out they're witches. And her family is also a line of witches. Pretty good. Especially since Cassie discovers that her soulmate is her new bestfriend's longtime boyfriend. Awkward, huh?
The Night World series consists of:
Secret Vampire, Daughters Of Darkness, Spellbinder, Dark Angel, The Chosen, Soulmate, Huntress, Black Dawn & Witchlight. The tenth book in the series,
Strange Fate is three years overdue. The Night World is a secret society of goregous and mostly evil vampires, witches, and shapeshifters who live alongside us, pretending to be just like us, all the while using and abusing humans. Of course, not all of them are like this and it's fun to realize that the ones expected to be the worst are the best sometimes. They only have two rules: never let us find out the truth about them and never fall in love with us. These are the stories about what happens when the rules get broken. A vampire finds out his bestfriend since childhood is dying of cancer and has to decide whether he will break NW law and change her into a vampire. A vampire involved in the slave trade of humans and the most feared vampire hunter are soulmates. The two main characters of each book are soulmates. Of course, they're usually completely different - especially on the issue of good or evil. In the last book, though, the conflict was external. A panther shapeshifter serving as the bodyguard to the legendary Witch Child discovers that her soulmate is the prince destined to marry the Witch Child for the sake of a very necessary alliance between the witches and shapeshifters.
Laurell K. Hamilton
Official Laurell K. Hamilton Website I love Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series and Meredith Gentry series. They have action, adventure, a touch of romance, a touch of mystery, and lots of the supernatural. The Anita Blake series is extremely violent, but in an exciting way. The Meredith Gentry series has less violence, but more sex.
The books of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series, in order, are:
Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, Circus Of The Damned, The Lunatic Cafe, Bloody Bones, The Killing Dance, Burnt Offerings, Blue Moon, Obsidian Butterfly, and
Narcissus In Chains. It's a world where every kind of supernatural beings are real and, more or less, accepted citizens of the U.S. Especially vampires and lycanthropes, particularly werewolves and wereleopards. Anita is a necromancer and vampire executioner. She also helps the St. Louis police with paranormal crimes. She's involved with the Master Vampire of St. Louis, Jean Claude, and the local werewolf pack-leader, Richard. Quite a life, huh?
The Meredith Gentry series is a new mini-series about the Unseelie Sidhe Princess Meredith. The only book out so far is
A Kiss Of Shadows. The second book,
A Caress Of Twilight, is due out this month. Meredith had a touch of human and lesser fey blood, which had made her mortal among a court of powerful immortals. She also wasn't very powerful. In constant danger from her cousin, Prince Cel, she ran away to Los Angeles, where she worked as a supernatural private detective for three years. Anyway, now, she's powerful and has three years to produce an heir, with the help of the gorgeous members of the Queen's Guard, which will give her the Unseelie crown. But if Cel produces an heir first, he becomes King. This was a very fun book. I plan to get the second book the same day it's released.
Katherine A. Applegate
I'm primarily a fan of Katherine Applegate's young adult series, Animorphs. There are fifty-something regular Animorphs novels, plus several Megamorphs and Chronicles. It's about five human kids and one Andalite kid trying to stop the evil Yeerks from taking over the Earth. The Yeerks are parasites, closely resembling slugs, who crawl into the brains of humans and other species and control them. The war between the Andalites and the Yeerks is going on all over the galaxy but the Andalites are a long way from Earth. A dying Andalite gave the humans the ability to 'morph' into any animal whose DNA they absorbed. The level of violence is unusual for a kids' series and the young heroes kill, get tortured and one even dies in a suicidal battle. It's really not as absurd as it may sound. KAA's characterization is wonderful.
She's also written several other YA series, including the Everworld series, and some novels for the Love Stories series. Love Stories #2,
Sharing Sam is great. It has much more depth than the usual teen romance. Allison and Sam are falling in love. Allison't bestfriend, Isabella, is dying of cancer. She'll be dead within a couple of months. She's also in love with Sam. Allison insists that Sam go with Isabella. Sam can't pretend to love Isabella without actually ending up really loving her. Isabella dies. Allison and Sam get back together. It's an odd novel.
Jean M. Auel
The four books of Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children mini-series are:
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, The Valley Of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, and
The Plains of Passage. The fifth book,
The Shelter Of Stone should be published this spring. It's about a cavewoman named Ayla and her mate, Jondalar. They wander all over ice-age Europe. Ayla is the first to domesticate animals. To me, this series isn't about the plot. It's about all the incredible descriptions of the ice-age life and environment.
Dyan Sheldon
Actually, I've only read two of Dyan Sheldon's novels,
You Can Never Go Home Again and
Save The Last Dance For ME, but I loved them so much, I had to list them here. YCNGHA and STLDFM are about this spoiled rich brat named Angel. Her parents get divorced and she and her nerdy younger brother end up with their mother in a run-down house on Long Island(NY). She's really have a hard time adjusting to the change in lifestyle. And the house is haunted by the initially hostile ghost B.J. Spatano. He was a biker who died in the fifties. He becomes a friendly ghost, babysitting and cooking for Angel's brother. Angel tries to find out what really happened to BJ and deals with her own life. I just happened to pick YCNGHA up at a bookfair. Must have been my own literary angel guiding me. These two books are really good. It just has 'something' that separates it from other ghost novels.
Susan Krinard
Susan Krinard's Official Website Susan Krinard writes paranormal romance mostly. I love her werewolf novels, especially the historical ones. Her contemporary werewolf romances are
Prince Of Wolves and
Prince Of Shadows. The historical werewolf romances are
Touch Of The Wolf, Once A Wolf, and
Secret Of The Wolf.
Once A Wolf is my favorite of her books. I love the hero and heroine, and the New Mexico setting. And I love the secondary characters, especially Sim and Esperanza. I'm hoping that one day S.K. will give them their own book. With them together, of course.
I Her upcoming novel,
The Forest Lord is a "beauty and the beast" type story, with the hero as a celtic fae lord. I'm really looking forward to it.
Anne Bishop
Anne Bishop's Official Website Anne Bishop is one of my new favorite authors. I want to reread her books within a week of reading them! She has two different series. The Black Jewels trilogy(
Daughter Of The Blood, Heir To The Shadows, Queen Of The Darkness) and its prequel,
The Invisible Ring. And the projected Tir Alain trilogy. The first Tir Alain book is
The Pillars Of The World. The second one is due out later this year,
Shadows And Light.
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