The weather’s all over the place today – started off with bright sunshine and then gale-force winds (well, almost), then it snowed (!) and then became drizzly and now it’s sunny again. I did venture out to go shopping (and wasn’t the only one with the same idea – the shops were packed) and came back with… Kelley Armstrong‘s “Personal Demon” and Lee Child‘s “Nothing to Lose”!
Yes – all sorted for the long Easter weekend 
Also, thoughts on a couple of books I read recently – Julie Anne Long‘s “The Perils of Pleasure” was a B- for me. She has a lovely unique descriptive way of writing – here’s one passage that I really liked. Madeleine and Colin are on the run, and finally find somewhere safe where they can sleep. They have an argument over who should stay awake to keep watch, and Madeleine persuades Colin to try out the flour sacks that they plan on using as a bed first, knowing that he’s completely exhausted:
All she had to do now was wait.
And not for long, as it turned out. For his eyes soon began to take on a faintly surprised, abstracted… inward sort of look. His body, little by little, was registering the softness and give of those sacks.
She’d seen that very expression before: on a cat when it crossed into a sunbeam. It was all about helpless, inevitable surrender.
How perfect is that analogy! While the romance wasn’t 100% convincing, this was a much better read compared to the last JAL book I read (“Ways to be Wicked”) – am glad I gave her another go.
Also on Richelle Mead‘s “Succubus on Top” – I really liked the first book, “Succubus Blues”, and so picked this up when it came out back in January (see, I’m making an effort to tackle my TBR pile). I liked it – it’s a B for me, but it’s a hard one to categorise genre-wise.
To me, it’s a romance because the main conflict is all about Georgina and Seth not being able to be together – because she’s a succubus and if they get it on, she uses his lifeforce and shortens his life. But this book also breaks the “rules” of romance - because she’s a succubus and has to have sex with other men in order to live. So it’s a hard one – romance or urban fantasy? Who’s the audience for these books? Will romance readers be squicked out at the thought of the heroine having sex with other men? Will it be too romance-y for fantasy readers? I’ve no idea.
The romance didn’t quite work for me – I think Seth is an incredibly sexy man, but he’s a bit too… passive in the relationship for me. What does he see in Georgina? Also, one of the subplots struck me as inconsistent – as a succubus (i.e. denizen of Hell), you would think Georgina and her fellow succubi / inccubi / whatever would be all about sowing unrest in the human world. So why are they trying to bring down the leader of this ultra-conservative faction that’s promoting intolerance, etc? Surely they would be supporting them. There is a belated sort-of explanation towards the end, but this really struck me as not being well-thought through. Perhaps the underlying problem is that Ms Mead has to make Georgina a sympathetic character especially since this is first-person (and succeeds in my view, btw), but then ends up having plot inconsistencies like this because well, she’s a succubus.
Having said that, I enjoy this series (love the bureaucratic version of Hell Ms Mead has created and the secondary characters) and this book has progressed the overall story arc. I’ll continue reading and hope there is a HEA conclusion for Georgina and Seth (and without a deus ex machina type device being used).
