Monday, March 25, 2013

A Certain Style

Shitkickers planted defiantly on the IKEA pressboard pile in front of her, glass of Trader Joe's finest three-buck chuck red at her elbow, Reader cracked her neck to one side then the other, the snap-crackle-pop action saying all that needed to be said about her day job in the cubicle mines.

She picked up the e-reader.  Ran a finger down the soft, aniline-dyed purple leather cover and gave it a narrow-eyed look.  Clicked it on and suffered the inexplicable delay while it came to life.  One of these days, she promised herself, she'd find the right neck at Amazon and have a little heart to heart about device latency, because goddamn.  There's just no reason for that.

The list of unread items swam into view and she settled a little deeper into the Scotch-guarded cushions.  Thinking about titles. And authors.  Sometimes it all felt so hollow.  There were so many of them.  And she loved them, she really did, each and every one... while they lasted.  (Well, mostly.)  But was all worth it for those rare few that brought the magic.  The shift.  Taking her out of the routine of work-eat-chores-sleep, and transforming her into powerful, otherworldly creatures, human and otherwise, who lived larger than life.

Yeah, the shift.

She could really use that after the week she'd had, but the odds seemed low.  Just hadn't been feelin' it lately.

Her ice-blue eyes scanned the list again and she let them land on a name she'd lingered over before, but hadn't taken to the next level.  Coreene Callahan had first made an impression at RT2012 - the female was pure energy, passing up fellow conventioneers with her staccato stride down the beige hotel corridors; her sassy blond coif flipping as she talked over her shoulder to her slower companions.  All Reader had caught from that was "my dragons," but it was enough.  Enough to find out more....

................................

OK, I just can't keep that up any more (it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time to do a whole post in that style.... but as it turns out, nope).  What I'm trying to say here, is that Callahan has a very familiar style, and if you're into JR Ward, you will recognize it, right down to the shitkickers and referring to the women as "females;" a violent transition from apparently-normal-human to super-powerful paranormal being, which requires an intense, life-threatening feeding session and hopefully an equally intense sexual encounter.  She also does the "civilian/human outsider cop caught up in the warrior world" book.  So far no one has crawled off to die in a cave, but you'll also recognize the bonded mate thing.

So, lots of similarities.  I have panned authors before for series that were too copycat for my taste, and this one is even MORE similar in a lot of ways, but somehow I just liked it anyway.  I love the dragon shifters; the action/fight scenes are intense and well-choreographed (a challenge to do in mid-air); and what can I say, I'm a sucker for the stories where the toughest guys fall the hardest for their women.

Recommend!


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