E-Book Review: Ouroboros by K. H. Koehler

An exclusive e-book from Merchant’s Keep, Ouroboros starts off with a fairly well-trodden intro: Costello is a mob boss looking to hire an assassin named O to hunt down and kill another hitman named Rei in retaliation for Rei kidnapping, carving, and killing Costello’s daughter. For a brief time after O took the job, I got a vibe similar to the old Shadow pulp novels.  (I’ve read only two, so I’m hardly an expert) However, soon thereafter, O reveals that he isn’t human, but an Asian skinwalker, a form of wereanimal. I won’t ruin the many surprises in store for readers, but I will say that O’s animal form is as unique as his method of transformation is. The visual description on his animal form is vivid, and the way “The Other” killed his victims left me shuddering every time I thought about being eaten alive like that.

At just a hair under 12K, this is a very short story. But it packs one hell of a punch in that short span, making me feel a lot for O, and for Jesse, a junkie hooker who sees O change while she’s higher than a kite. As such she isn’t all there to plan a proper escape. But once she sobers up, she makes a decision that is both tragic and noble.

This is a story with a tiny cast, but the two leading roles are both intriguing and easy to identify with. I wished there had been more time spent on the antagonists, but with such a short story, it’s just not possible. So really, my worst complaint with Ouroboros was that it could have stretched on a bit longer. (My few other complaints are so tiny, they aren’t worth bringing up.)

A fantastic story with a surprising ending, I give Ouroboros four stars and recommend it to fans of shapeshifters, horror, and dark fantasy.

The plight of the tortured artist…

I’d like to explain where this post is coming from. While talking on Twitter with zumayabooks, we got on the topic of “squicky” books. Lately, the muse wants to wander through my past. My sexual past. As in the part that took place in my preteens. This has so far resulted in two novels, one very long and sexually explicit story about a child prostitution ring, and another story about a pedophile wizard and descendant of Rumpelstiltskin stealing a young witch to become his apprentice.

No, really.

Yeah, I wrote it, but the story was more about the girl’s training in magic and ESP. I went visually chaste with the sex scenes, but I still didn’t shy away from doing them. Then I got done, and I was like, “Fuck, why the hell did I write that? No one will ever read that! I can’t sell this shit!” And the muse is like “Sell it? So what? Come on, I want to write another like that!”

The gist of my problem is, I don’t wan’t to write the next book, whatever it is. I would if it were mental fluff in between the bestsellers. But my muse always wants to go to strange places that don’t sell. Not always sexual places, although it does come up a lot. In fact it comes up so often that sometimes hubby complains about it. I can’t really help that. I was sexually active at a young age, and sex and my confused sexuality and even more confused gender were often on my mind during most of my life. It makes sense that these themes would show up in my writing.

Book Review: Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

The Twilight series continues to be the most pleasant ongoing surprise in serial fiction with this third installment, and for me the surprise is how much I love the story and the characters after hearing so much negative criticism. I was told under no uncertain terms how much I would hate this story, and how shallow the characters were. Nothing could be further from the truth in my opinion. I love this story, and I love almost all the characters with equal passion.

Eclipse is heavy with conflicts, most of them escalating from the open threads of the previous books. In reading this story, I could identify with almost everyone, save for Rosalie and Alice. With Alice, I love her when she’s behaving, but I’ve never cared for her methods of manipulation. Here she’s on her catty worst behavior, exploiting her “cuteness” over and over to be cloyingly protective of Bella for no valid reason.

Rosalie is just a whiny bitch. Here, though, I admit the problem is personal. When Rosalie gets a chance to explain why she’s a bitch it basically comes out, “Boohoo, I’ll never have kids, but I have a fantastic life otherwise. You should want to live and have kids, Bella, because that’s all that matters in life.” Well, as a sterile woman who could never have kids, I fail to identify with Rosalie’s point of view, and I take her whiny, bratty behavior far more personally than I should.

But aside from them, for the first time in the series, I can see most everyone’s motivations clearly, and even if I know these opposing desires can only end in hurt feelings, I also understand why everyone is behaving so stubbornly. The stakes at this point in the story are very high, and both Edward and Jacob become desperate to win Bella’s heart. Both play dirty, and both end up hurting themselves just as often as they hurt Bella.

A new kind of social experience for readers…

I’ve got an idea for a new social network, something similar to Goodreads, which, aside from Twitter, is the only social service I still use. The main goal of this site would be a social home page for avid readers. One might argue that you can connect to writers on the current social platforms, but there’s a lot of limitations in how you friend people, and in how the site administrators view their role in the act of socializing. We’ll get to that in a bit. First let me explain the basic operation of this new social site for reading.

The front page for new visitors would have a generic update steam along with form fields in a top banner to sign up for one of three types of accounts; one for readers, one for writers, and one for publishers. Readers would fill out a list of genres they read, as well as list some titles of books they loved and books they hated. Then they could list the books they’ve read on shelves, like Goodreads. As an added bonus, our theoretical network will allow Goodreads and LibraryThing members to import their virtual shelves to save them from relogging the same books over.

Within a few days of beginning this service and logging books, the network would have a decent idea of what kinds of writers and genres the reader might enjoy. So on the sidebar of their update stream, they get a list of writers and publishers who they might want to follow. (More on what following entails in a moment…) Before the system can offer suggestions, the readers are free to search and browse writers by genre or by their name. So they can friend writers they may already know even before the system starts making suggestions. Like Goodreads, many authors would be logged into the system with a generic blank author account, even if they are not really members. This allows readers to be “friends” with Stephen King, even if he never signs up for an account. If he does, his real account would be merged with the pseudo-account. (Again, just like the Goodreads policy. Did I mention yet how much I like the design of Goodreads?)