Review: No Going Back by Mark L. Van Name

No Going Back by Mark L. Van Name
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was not as grim as the last book in the series, Children No More, but still continued the more serious bent in Jon's character development that has taken place since the first two rather fluffy (fun) heist stories. Jon is at a point where he can no longer ignore the nightmares from his childhood, and in response he keeps throwing himself, and Lobo, into situations where he has to help people, usually children, even at great personal risk to himself. As Lobo observes, he's spinning out of control. And he won't tell Lobo why and stupidly thinks that it's OK to keep huge secrets from not only his best friend, but his greatest asset; it's hard for them to really protect each other if they can't honestly assess what each can really do. And with Jon's emotions fluctuating so wildly, from the things Lobo has been able to observe about Jon's abilities, he's very concerned about what the consequences of a blowout could mean for the world they're on when it happens. He doesn't know just what Jon can do with his abilities or if he'll care enough for his own safety to control himself. Our boys are a mess, but Jon is determined to see the job through. Even though there's yet another lovely woman involved as well. The job comes first. Because maybe, just maybe Jon may finally find some information about his past in the process and nothing is more important than that.


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Review: Prepare to Die! by Paul Tobin

Prepare to Die! by Paul Tobin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. Unlike most people, I always thought that being a superhero would be a horrible job. Who wants to fight all of the time and be a target all of the time? So that perspective naturally fed into the approach this author took to projecting a (somewhat) realistic idea of what being a hero would really mean, with a lot of sad and dirty details in the mix. When we meet our hero he's done, beaten, worn down and just done with it all, and then we get to go back and try to figure out how he got to that point. The hero never really matured beyond the point of the sixteen year-old boy that he was at the time of the accident that made him a hero, so there's a lot of crude sexual content that makes the book not for the faint on heart. But it seemed to suit the character, who was swept out of his normal life when he was just a kid, and is still pretty young at only twenty-five at the end of the story.

I found the book to be a great page-turner, I just always wanted to find out what was going to happen/had happened to this kid. It fit into the comic book mythos in a grown-up fashion.


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Review: Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews

Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everything about this book was good, these authors just know how to write. They always hit every point - humor, adventure, great characters, heart, plus a nice dose of interesting mythology, it's all here. Fans of the Kate Daniels series will not be disappointed in any way in this book featuring Kate's best friend, Andrea, and her love story with Raphael. I've always liked Andrea and wanted to know more about her and they did a stellar job here in filling filling in her background and completing her story in a satisfying way. And using Roman so much was really smart too. These authors are always clever in their novellas and short stories about fulfilling fans' curiosity about secondary characters who've peaked our interest, so it made sense to use Roman in this novel too. I just love the way they can add just a couple of sentences here and there that add so much depth to secondary characters, they just leap off the page and make them so intriguing that I can't wait to learn more about them too.

I really like that the novel wasn't just a side-story, but it also revealed some important things about a few of the characters along the way. We learned something really key about Curran, there was a lot about Roman that was really intriguing and that I wouldn't be surprised to see come up again in future Kate books, along with the obvious character development for Andrea and Raphael. The fact that the authors called this 5.5 in the Kate Daniels series and not just a separate novel placed in the world indicates that it has an important place in the development of these characters and this series; fans really don't want to miss this, both for the fun of it and for the developments that take place in the overall story arc.

And I saw (either on Twitter or the blog, I can't remember) that some fans are complaining that it's too short, which is crazy, it's a 326 page book! Maybe it just seems short somehow because there's also a really long, 105 page novella included with the book as a bonus, so somehow that makes the novel portion of the book look smaller when you get to the end and realize that you still have so many pages left to read. It isn't logical, but that's all I can think.

As for the novella, Magic Gifts, I originally read it when the authors published it for free on the website for two weeks over Christmas 2011, a truly lovely gift indeed! I said then and I'll repeat now that they always writes solid stories that are really satisfying reads, it's really impressive. The only other author that I can think of that's as consistent with short stories is Jim Butcher. And the fact that they've included this terrific, long, Kate & Curran story in addition to a complete novel is petty cool. The only odd thing is that the novella takes place before the novel and refers to things that happen in the novel (and overlap it slightly), so really you should read Magic Gifts before Gunmetal Magic. If you look the numbering on Goodreads it's even listed as 5.4 and the novel is 5.5. But it also repeats a scene from Kate's viewpoint that might take away a bit from the humor of seeing it from Andrea's viewpoint in the novel, tricky. Either way, both stories are terrific, and stand well on their own, and are even better together.


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