What: 1st in Series Challenge
When: 1 January – 31 December 2008
Who: Joy (Thoughts of Joy)
Rules: Read 12 books, that are the first book in a series, by the end of the year. See Joy’s site.
This is another challenge I did better in, if you count books that were not on my original lists. I counted at least five more books that were labeled as a 1st book in a series. As you can see below, there were also several books that I picked up, but I could not finish for one reason or another. So, even though I consider this challenge incomplete, I don’t consider it a total failure, since I made every attempt to finish it.
I’ve already signed up for next years challenge.
My list (Books in RED are on more than one list/alternate list):
- Witch Hunt: Haunted by Lisa Childs (1st in a trilogy) {10 Sep 08} (REVIEW)
- Black Ice by Anne Stuart (1st in the Ice series) {13 Feb 08} (REVIEW)
- Ill Wind by Rachel Caine (1st in the Weather Wardens) {4 May 08} (REVIEW)
- State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy (1st in the White House Chef Mystery series) {9 Jan 09} (REVIEW)
- Night Life by Elizabeth Guest (1st in Pharaoh’s Rising series) {9 Feb 08} (REVIEW)
The unread and DNFs:
- Lost Calling by Evelyn Vaughn (1st in the Madonna Key – multiple authors)
- Death on a Silver Tray by Rosemary Stevens (1st in th Beau Brummel mysteries)
- Bittenby Kelley Armstrong (1st in the Women of the Otherworld)
- Proof by Justine Davis (1st in the Athena Force – multiple authors) (DNF)
- Knights of the Round Table: Lancelotby Gwen Rowley (1st in a trilogy) {26 Apr 08} (DNF)
- The Last Templar by Michael Jecks (1st in the Knights Templar)
- Familiar Stranger by Michele Hauf (1st in the Dark Enchantment series – multiple authors)
- The Beast Within by Lisa Renee Jones (1st in the Knights of White)
- The Defiant Mistress by Clarie Thornton (1st in the City of Flames trilogy)
- The Medusa Project by Cindy Dees (1st in the Medusas)
- To the Edge by Cindy Gerard (1st in the Bodyguards)
Alternatives:
- The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland
- The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason (1st in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles) (DNF)
- Who Makes Up These Rules, Anyway?by Stevi Mittman (1st in Teddi Bayer series)
- Heart of Light by Sarah A. Hoyt (1st in the Magical British Empire series)
- Morrigan’s Cross by Nora Roberts (1st in the Circle trilogy)
- The Legend of Banzai Maguireby Susan Grant (1st in the 2176 series – multi author)
- Assassin’s Apprenticeby Robin Hobb
- Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Haunted
Author: Lisa Childs
Copyright: 2006 (Harlequin); pgs. 296
Series: Silhouette Nocturne #6; Witch Hunt #1
Sensuality: Warm
Who: Ariel Cooper (witch) and David Koster
Where: Michigan
Ariel Cooper is descended for a long line of witches, each who had a different “gift”. Ariel’s gift is that she can see the dead. When she and her sisters — Elena, the eldest and Irina, the youngest — were children, they were taken from their mother. Before that event, Myra Cooper told them the family legend and gave each of her daughters one of the family charms to help protect them. Ariel and her sisters were separated and she hasn’t see them since.
Life has been rough for Ariel. Bounced around from foster family to foster family, and thought to be crazy, Ariel has found it hard to get close to people. Even so, she’s managed to go to college and become an elementary school teacher. She’s been dating the brilliant and wealthy David Koster for six months, having met when one of her student writing assignments led to him visiting her classroom. Though she’s had her heart broken before, Ariel can’t help but fall for this kind and generous man. In the time that they’ve been dating, she’s manage to keep her secret from him, afraid that she’ll lose him.
But all that changes when the ghost of one of her students appears suddenly in her classroom. Ariel had long suspected that the little girl was being abused, but without proof, she could only do so much. She sends the police, already knowing it’s too late to save the child. The incident leaves her wracked with guilt. For not being able to help the little girl, for keeping secrets from David and for pushing him away when he was trying to comfort her, and for putting his best friend, police officer Ty McIntyre, in danger.
The incident has also made David realize that he’s afraid to lose Ariel. He loves her, at that frightens her. Shunned once before by a former boyfriend, Ariel struggles with telling him the truth. She keeps putting it off, and instead focuses on finding out what happened to her sisters. The reason for the urgency is that an old enemy of the witches is out for revenge, and several members of Ariel’s extended maternal family end up dead, including her own mother. The mysterious killer is after the sisters and their charms.
Since this is the first book in a trilogy, the main story threads — the sisters reuniting and confronting their enemy — are not resolved in this book. The primary focus is on Ariel’s struggle with being rejected all her life. She was never adopted and her name was never changed, nor did she leave the community she grew up in. If any of her family had really wanted her, they could have found her easily enough. She is stunned to learn that a least one of her sisters lives nearby.
This was a quick read, once I had several hours on uninterrupted reading time. It wasn’t a scary story or very suspenseful. Since romance books like this must have a happy ending, the author’s attempt to make us believe the hero was actually the bad guy wasn’t very effective. I never once thought David was the culprit.
Started: 6 September 2008
Finished: 10 September 2008
Teaser Tuesdays post
Rating:
Enjoyed it!
tools
Teaser Tuesdays asks you to:
Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!
The teaser:
As soon as the old woman had given him the book, he had read it all. He knew every secret now, the other things his ancestor had admitted only in the pages of his private journal.
– from page 95, Haunted (Lisa Childs)
Why I picked this book: I’m reading this Silhouette Nocturne as part of the Ghostly Challenge. The main character, Ariel Cooper, is a witch who can see the souls of the newly departed.
Ill Wind
Author: Rachel Caine
Copyright: 2003 (ROC); pgs. 337
Series: Weather Warden #1
Sensuality:
Warm
Back: Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden. Usually, all it takes is a wave of her hand to tame the most violent weather. But now Joanne is trying to outrun another kind of storm: accusations of corruption and murder. So she’s resorting to the very human tactic of running for her life. Her only hope is Lewis, the most powerful Warden. Unfortunately, he’s also on the run from the World Council. It seems he’s stolen not one but three bottles of Djinn — making him the most wanted man on earth. And without Lewis, Joanne’s chances of surviving are as good as a snowball in — well, a place she may be headed. So she and her classic Mustang are racing hard to find him because there’s some bad weather closing in fast.
Comments: Joanne is a lot more powerful than she believes herself to be. She’s good at what she does and just does it. She accepts an offer from one of her bosses to help him with a special project of his. Unfortunately, it’s not what she was expecting and now she’s on the run, accused of murder and infected with a demon. Lewis — or any Djinn — is Joanne’s only chance of survival: The demon cannot overpower a Djinn. Joanne believes that all Lewis would have to do is order one of his Djinn to remove the demon, and one of her problems would be solved.
If it were only that simple.
The underlining theme of the book is the choices people, and Djinn (free ones anyway), make and the consequences of those choices. When she realize that foisting a demon on a Djinn is just as wrong as infesting another human, Joanne refuses to take the easy way out. To Wardens, Djinn are tools. When bound together, Djinn and Warden powers are enhanced and they can control the most powerful storms, earthquakes, and fires. But bound Djinn have no choice when ordered to do something they find ethically wrong. It takes an encounter with an unbound Djinn for Joanne to realize that they are living creatures with feelings and concepts of right and wrong.
This book is almost non-stop action, as Joanne tries to out-run storms and the Wardens. Since I read the blurb for Heat Stroke before I finished the book, I knew how this book would end. But that didn’t distract me from the story. I really loved the concepts of the Wardens and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Started: 26 April 2008
Finished: 4 May 2008
LOVED IT !!
Rating:
Black Ice
Author: Anne Stuart
Copyright: 2005 (Mira); pgs. 377
Series: 1st in the “Ice” series
Sensuality: Hot
Who: Chloe Underwood and Bastien Toussaint
From the back: Living paycheck to paycheck in Paris, American book translator Chloe Underwood would give anything for some excitement and passion — even a little danger. So when she’s offered a lucrative weekend gig translating at a business conference in a remote château, she jumps at the chance to shake things up.
Comments: I found this book hard to put down. I could have easily finished it in two days — one, if I had started reading it earlier in the day — but I forced myself to put it aside so I wouldn’t be two reviews behind.
Wow. Yes, Bastien isn’t your typical romance hero, and that’s what makes him interesting. A ruthless agent tired of the “at any cost” mandate of the agency he works for, Bastien is beyond burnout. This makes him vulnerable to his sub-conscience, which propels him to find out what’s become of Chloe in the château. Caring about anyone is a death sentence to someone in his line of work. As he sees it, if he’s going to die anyway, at least let it be for doing the right thing.
Though Bastien would have Chloe think otherwise, he is a good guy. The Committee is, regardless of their tactics, supposed to be working for the greater good. The fact that Bastien never considers turning traitor indicates he still have a few idealistic loyalties. However, he doesn’t hesitate to tell Chloe that he isn’t a nice man, that she shouldn’t make him out to be something he isn’t, and that she should forget about him and get on with her life. Once he realizes he’s in love with her, it’s more important to him that he keeps her safe by staying out of her life.
I liked Chloe. She is surprisingly strong — manages to withstand being tortured longer than one would have expected, bounces back from more than one brush with death, and faces down the same adversary twice. Though she has good reason to, she can’t seem to bring herself to hate Bastien for very long. She doesn’t realize the effect she has on him, that the small acts of kindness are the results of her influence on him: sparing the dogs, going back for his coat because she asks for it, etc. She has unknowingly wormed her way into his heart. She easily could have been annoying and whiny. I glad that she wasn’t. I don’t think a weak, clingy heroine could have lasted long with Bastien.
Looking forward to reading the other books in this series.
Started: 10 February 2008
Finished: 13 February 2008
LOVED IT !!
Rating:
feed
