Book review--The God Eaters

Oh yeah, I did say I was going to do this once a week, didn't I? Then again, I also said that wouldn't last very long, so there you go.

Title: The God Eaters
Author: Jesse Hajicek
Genre: Contemporary, Sci-fi/Fantasy
Pages: 442
Cover art: Quite mild and suitable for reading on public transport without the risk of strangers staring at you.

Book jacket blurb: Imprisoned for 'inflammatory writings' by the totalitarian Theocracy, shy intellectual Ashleigh Trine figures his story's over. But when he meets Kieran Trevarde, a hard-hearted gunslinger with dark magic in his blood, Ash finds that necessity makes strange heroes . . . and love can change the world.

Disclaimer: You’re all intelligent people capable of making your own decisions. Just because I like something and was willing to spend money on it doesn’t mean I’m saying the same will be true for you. And just because I don’t like something doesn’t make it crap.

Review

It’s like reading Stephen King, if Stephen King wrote m/m fantasy-romance-action/adventure. Better than Stephen King, actually, because Stephen King generally sucks at endings. This one definitely does not suck.

The God Eaters is vivid and loaded with terrific imagery. The author has a real talent for setting scenes, making the reader see the surroundings, hear the little critters in the scrub. The world is introduced organically, through the eyes of the characters, it's not force-fed to the reader, and you never once feel like you're a very unfortunate, very bored fly on the wall at the Council of Elrond. Though the world itself is rather Earth-like in its scenery and occupants, Earth rules don't apply here.

Like all good fantasy novels, it’s better the second time around, when you understand all the references and recognize all the players. The author is very good at poking at some interesting insights into human nature without being preachy about it.

What I liked: I quite liked following Ash and Kieran through this pseudo-western, and I loved watching their characters change and grow as the plot intensified. It's got really good pacing, believable pacing—there are no idiotic pauses for sex in the middle of a crisis here—with the action unfurling alongside the character development and exposition. There are unpredictable twists, which carry the story forward constantly, leaving you wondering at two-o'clock in the morning whether you really have to get up at six for your morning run before schlepping kids off to school, or if you could maybe hit one more chapter and sleep 'til seven.

Naturally, for me, the bottom line is all about the characters, and I absolutely fell for these guys. Ashleigh is an inherent smartass, who cannot seem to keep his mouth shut—to save his own life or anybody else’s—and a lot of times can’t get out of his own way. His snark had me snorting at some really inappropriate times. Kieran is the tough-snarly-guy-with-a-very-deeply-hidden-squishy-center, which pushes my buttons dead-center. There is one point in the story, where Kieran is protecting an unconscious Ash and is approached by some people who most likely mean no good:

…Kieran took his gun out from the back of his waistband and stuck it in the front. “Pretend I’m a bear,” he said. “Ignore me and I won’t have to kill you.”

Did I mention the author has a gift for dialogue?

These guys go through hell, and then go through an even worse hell, and then get dragged into the mother of all hells, and I hung on every word. From a prison that isn't really a prison but has much more sinister applications, to an escape to a desert wilderness, to confrontations with old enemies and then more confrontations with new and much more terrible enemies, the story kept me involved, and the characters kept me caring. Ash might get on your nerves after a while (he did mine), but give him a chance. He gets better. And then Kieran might get on your nerves, because omg, boys are so dumb! Then again, boys are dumb, so there you go.

Nitpicks: The world wasn't as rounded as I thought it could have been. There are trains but no mass communication system, which seemed a little off to me, and was never put into a context that explained it. Now, the thing is, this is a fantasy novel, it's not this world, so it's quite possible that another Earth-like world would come up with trains, but not phones and computers, so I have to give the author the benefit of the doubt. It's just that I am from this world, and being from this world, stuff like that made me wonder about things other than the story itself.

Another really nitpicky thing was the endearments and the way everything turned purple every time these guys had sex. I mean, it was romantic, and certainly not a chore to read, but I kept wondering why a guy (Kieran, the big, tough-guy) would suddenly turn into a chick in the sack. Then again, this was written by a guy, so what do I know?

The last is my own pet-peeve, but there was a lot of 'the pale boy said', and 'the northerner turned', and 'the taller man did whatever', which really bugs me. Bugs me, and not people in general, so I can't really count it, but still.

None of those little yes-I'm-way-too-picky things took away from my enjoyment of this book. And none of them will take away my enjoyment during a second (or third or fourth) read, either.

The elephant in the room: Sex. Definitely sex. Nothing graphic, no harsh descriptions or vocabulary to make one wince. Tastefully done, if a touch purple. It was sweet and romantic, and definitely erotic. No annoying fade-to-black, but no twangy porno bass riff playing in the back of your head either.

Worth the $21.60? Yes. Absolutely. I finished it just a couple of days ago and then went back to the beginning to start it again and savor it this time. Definitely money well-spent for me, and the fact that it was long and involved only makes it better. I would have paid more.

Where you can buy:

Paperback: $21.60 (the used price is only a couple pennies less) at Amazon
(No ebook available.)

OR . . .

You can get it for free. Yes, free, at the author's website HERE.

Now, here's the thing—if you read it from the site and enjoy it, please consider letting the author know. For me, it was worth the money to have bought it, and I'm glad I did, so if you feel even somewhat the same, please thank the author for allowing you to experience the story for free.

Cross-posted to LiveJournal

Book Review--PsyCop

Title: The PsyCop Series
Author: Jordan Castillo Price
Genre: Contemporary, m/m, urban fantasy, suspense
Pages: Book One, Among the Living: 105
Book Two, Criss Cross: 140
Book Three, Body & Soul: 97
Book Four, Secrets: 223
Book Five, Camp Hell: 246
Cover art: One of them has a very nice picture of two guys kissing, but that’s as explicit as any of the covers get.

Book jacket blurb: (For Book One, Among the Living.) Victor Bayne, the psychic half a PsyCop team, is a gay medium who’s more concerned with flying under the radar than in making waves.

He hooks up with handsome Jacob Marks, a non-psychic (or “Stiff”) from an adjacent precinct at his ex-partner’s retirement party and it seems like his dubious luck has taken a turn for the better. But then a serial killer with a gruesome M.O. surfaces--and no one agrees what he looks like.

Solving murders is a snap when you can ask the victims whodunit, but this killer’s not leaving any spirits behind.

Disclaimer: You’re all intelligent people capable of making your own decisions. Just because I like something and was willing to spend money on it doesn’t mean I’m saying the same will be true for you. And just because I don’t like something doesn’t make it crap.

Review

Okay, I am definitely going to try not to be too spoilery for the individual books, but since I’m reviewing a series, there may be some things that come close to the line or even step over. Sorry. Can’t be helped.

This author I tried because another author I enjoy, Josh Lanyon (we’ll get to him, too, in a future post), waxed somewhat rhapsodic about her in one of his posts, and I do adore a series. I bought the first book in the PsyCop series—Partners, which contains the first two stories, Among the Living and Criss Cross—got it on a Wednesday and dug right in. And then I stopped about a quarter of the way into the first story, ordered the rest of the series with overnight shipping, and saved the whole thing for the weekend. Because I knew, once I had dipped into that first story, I wouldn’t be able to sit still, knowing more books were out there and I didn’t have them.

What I liked: Pretty much everything. This is another that’s told in first-person (there seem to be a lot of those in this genre), entirely from the POV of Victor Bayne, a medium and Chicago detective, who can hear, see and speak to the dead. Lots of times, the dead will tell him who killed them; sometimes they’ll just annoy him. Sometimes, they’ll even scare the crap out of him.

The interesting thing about Vic is that, despite the fact that he’s been seeing ghosts since his early teens, he’s never quite gotten over the shock of it all. He should be jaded, he acts like he’s jaded, but he’s not. And I don’t think he knows it. He’s not terribly thrilled that he’s a medium, he doesn’t trust anyone to know exactly how good of a medium he is (you’ll see why as the series progresses), and knowing that he creeps out just about everyone doesn’t help.

Okay, creeps out everyone but Jacob Marks. I don’t think it’s possible to creep out Jacob. In fact, the things Vic can do are a kinky turn-on for Jacob—you can see it from their first meeting, and as things progress, you can see him falling hard for Vic, which is very interesting, because even though this is all told through Vic’s POV, Vic himself doesn’t see it. Or maybe can’t make himself believe it entirely. Jacob is big and brawny, good-looking and sexy, and for a great deal of the time at the beginning of their relationship, Vic’s constantly caught by surprise that there is a relationship, and can’t figure what it is Jacob sees in him. But oh yeah, Jacob loves the shit out of Vic, and that never fails to make my knees all watery. The book jacket blurb says ‘hooks up’ but it’s much more than that, right from the beginning.

I loved following Vic all through this series. He’s obviously damaged, but the way in which he handles it is entertaining, endearing and a little disturbing. He’s a born smart-ass, and his asides—both to himself and out loud—had me on the floor too many times to count. He’s one of those guys who’s decent at his core, but has learned that every once in a while, one must shove the core beneath the façade to survive. He is a survivor, but with self-destructive tendencies that sometimes make you want to shake him, and when you get to Camp Hell, you see why, and that every one of his coping mechanisms was learned the hard way.

And Jacob’s there, right beside him, the whole way. Sometimes standing back and letting Vic lead or retreat, sometimes pushing him along the path, but always there, even when someone else wouldn’t have been, even when maybe Vic thinks he isn’t. Like I said, he adores Vic, and that makes me adore Jacob even more.

Throughout this series, you’ll watch their relationship develop (Thanksgiving with the family—bwah!), you’ll watch Vic grow, you’ll watch him take on his past, and by the time you get to THE END of the last book, you’ll have watched him become more of a complete person than he was when you started out. You’ll follow along while he deals with dead hookers who won’t leave him alone, encounters a succubus, gets kidnapped, endures zombies and new detective partners and co-habitation and astral rapists and crazy ghosts and suspicion and secrets, and a past that he can barely remember but haunts him more every day.

It’s a wild ride, absolutely, and I only wish the track was longer.

There are terrific secondary characters all over the place. All of them are developed exactly how they need to be, and all of them are interesting in their own rights. Crash is both annoying and entertaining, with a weirdly sinister charm that’s highly engaging. Caroline has some really entertaining straight-lines, Lisa could be a series all by herself, and so could Zigler. And damn, I want to know more about Miss Mattie. Pay particular attention to Warwick, because if you don’t, there is something towards the end of the fifth book that will make you wish you had.

Nitpicks: Considering it’s a five book series, almost none. I think there was one point in one of the stories where I kind of frowned and went, Hey, where the hell did he come from, just in time to save the day? but I think it’s one of those cases where the author was just kind of expecting me to figure it out for myself, and I didn’t. Once or twice, there was a zig where I thought there should have been a zag, and I had to keep reminding myself that Victor is a medium first, a detective second. He’s not slow, by any means, but he operates on a different level, and he sometimes misses the forest for the trees. Which only makes his character more believable, so it’s not a genuine nitpick. There were grammar tense snafus once in a while, but it seems like that’s a common pitfall of things told in the first-person.

The elephant in the room: Holy hell, was there sex. Starting on page ten! No dipping toes in here—Jacob sees what he wants, seizes an opportunity, and he goes and gets it. Now, for the most part, this is not the character-exposition-through-sexual-expression sort of sex I generally prefer to read—this is straight-out sex, some of it very… *snort* creative, so much so that if this were illustrated, I’d be turning the book sideways so I could figure out… Oh, that’s what they’re… hokey smokes! :o *snicker* There is absolutely caring throughout, but there’s also the whole ‘guy’ thing, the I’ve-got-this-boner-how-about-taking-care-of-it-for-me thing. And there is new kink I never even thought of. There was word usage I had to get used to, but hey, this is a guy, and a guy who is certainly not prone to flowery metaphors. It suited the characters and it worked.

Worth the $40.00? For the series, that is. And yes. Don’t just buy the first—buy them all. In hindsight, I would have paid more. I’d pay more now, for another. I have no idea if the author plans to write more in the series (besides a couple short stories revolving around secondary characters already published), but if she does, I’m there waving my Visa card. I’ve already read the entire series twice, and I know I’ll read it again. In fact, just talking about it now makes me want to pull it off the bookshelf and dive back in.

Where you can buy:

Ebook: $4.99 for the first two books in the series—Among the Living and Criss Cross—at JCP Books if you order by Sunday, July 18th. Otherwise, they’re $3.99 each.

Paperback: $11.16 ($7.00 new and used) at Amazon for PsyCop: Partners which contains Among the Living and Criss Cross (books 1 and 2).
$11.07 ($9.23 new and used) at Amazon for PsyCop: Property which contains Body & Soul and Secrets (books 3 and 4).
$14.95 (12.97 new and used) at Amazon for Camp Hell: A PsyCop Novel (book 5).

(If you get all three at once direct from Amazon, you’ll qualify for their free shipping, which generally takes about a week. If you get them from the used section, you’ll still have to pay $3.99 per book for s&h, regardless of whether you get all three from the same vendor, which in this case, makes buying used more expensive. Just saying.)

As I said, there are a couple short stories in the series, as well, but I haven’t read them, so you’ll have to do your own research.

FYI: Authors receive a greater royalty percentage when a book is purchased through the publisher.


Cross-posted to LiveJournal