Sunday Salon: A bit late...Black Jack; The Dead Travel Fast and Ink Exchange

The last time I contributed to the Sunday Salon was in March, so depending on how you look at it, I am either late for posting this Sunday just past or very late for not posting since March!

Black Jack by Lora Leigh


Let me say this first : I try not to be hard on books. I'm writing one and I can only imagine how terrible it will feel should I finally get published to read someone savaging the work I've poured my heart and soul into. But sometimes, a book is so bad it needs a warning label like DO NOT READ. This is one of those times.

Black Jack is one of the poorest books I've ever read. The character development is shallow, the plot is ludicrous, it's bloated by about 200 pages and there is a complete lack of interesting antagonists or hell, interesting characters in general. To be fair, Black Jack is pretty much erotic fiction and I know they're not usually books that have great plots. No one watches porn movies for great acting and story lines and no one reads erotic or romance fiction for the well developed characters and multi-layered plots. But really, this was crap by even a very low standard, mostly because it tries to dress itself up as more than it is, and fails miserably.

Here's the plot: Lillie Belle is from an upper class English background and was supposedly killed in a car accident with her MI5 agent father a number of years ago. Since then she is "Night Hawk", a deep undercover agent hired out as a bodyguard to very bad men, masquerading as a prostitute as a "cover." She's a virgin (of course) until she spends the night with "Black Jack" who has a similar tale of undercover woe. Then she loses her memory in an accident and spends the rest of the 400+ pages wringing her hands and not remembering, even though she has great "instincts" and can remember where her safe house is and her sniper rifle is (she's the best shot in the world, you know).

Where to start with how stupid this all is? We spend the entire book waiting for Lillie to remember her life and get away from the family member trying to kill her...for the third, then the fourth, then the fifth time. Interspersed are tepid but explicit sex scenes that seem ridiculous and boring, probably because the characters are in love with each other based on nothing we can see or understand. We don't even know who they are, let alone what makes them want each other. Honestly, I don't even know how I finished this book.

Lora Leigh is obviously not English - her characters read like Americans and should have been Americans and not uppercrust Brits. Don't even get me started on her cardboard English characters such as Lillie's bitchy elitist mother and her brother who works with the Queen (words fail me as to how dumb this is). She even makes reference to Lillie knowing the Queen Mother like she's still alive (she died quite some time ago). Given that the book was only published this year, I assume this is an old work that hasn't been updated prior to being published and re-packaged. Maybe the warning for this book should read "Old author's work published to make an extra buck and stunning in its utter mediocrity."

The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn


I'm a huge fan of Deanna Raybourn's Lady Julia Grey mystery series, so when I saw this stand alone book at my favourite local bookstore I was excited. The excitement lasted for a couple of chapters when for whatever reason - I'll get to that in a second - I stalled, stopped reading and put the book back on the shelf. When it came time for my recent overseas trip, I packed it, deciding to start from the beginning again. I did, I stalled yet again a couple more chapters in than the first time. I picked it up again last week and managed to get all the way through to the end. Despite all of that, this really isn't a bad book.

So what was with all the stalling on my part? The Dead Travel Fast purports itself to be a vampire book. In fact the very title is taken from Dracula, the most epic of all vampire novels (no matter what those crazy Twlight people might tell you). Things to know about me: I don't really like books about vampires. Werewolves, witches, magic wielders, supernatural powers = awesome. Vampires = not so much. I mean at the end of the day vampires are undead, they want to suck our blood and they're immortal. Everywhere that concept can be taken, it has been taken, at least to the level of my interest.

Raybourn writes beautifully - her attention to detail, her ability to describe a room, a view, a person is near flawless. This is something I struggle with as a writer so I admire it all the more in others. So perhaps it was Theodora, the protagonist, that I didn't really warm to. She wasn't horrible or cold or anything, she was just a bit bland and a bit filled with her own self importance as a serious "novelist". I also thought the lack of antagonist was irritating - there were some hints about the Count and some murmurs about the rest of the family but nothing really came to fruition until the last 20 pages when it turned out all was not as it seemed.

*little bit spoiler-ish*

And by that, I mean it turns out there may not be any vampires or anything of the supernatural after all, which leave certain events unexplained and unable to be reconciled with the rest of the book.

*end of possible spoiler*

This is a decent book, possibly more than decent if you're a vampire fan but, I can't say I enjoyed it as much as the Lady Julia Grey series.

Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr


This is the second book in Marr's Wicked Lovely series. The first was all about Aislinn and Keenan, the Summer King and Queen and this one is about Aislinn's friend, Leslie, who manages to get caught up in the world of faery when she chooses to have a tattoo inked on her skin that ties her to the King of the Dark Court, Irial. Toss in a compelling attraction between Leslie and another faery, Niall, and you have the makings of a good, dark book.

There is a growing movement in YA fiction towards stark, gritty realism whether it be in the form of death, eating disorders or abuse. This book frames Leslie as someone who survived a gang rape sanctioned by her drug dealer brother. This isn't a key feature of the book and is never explored in detail (thank goodness) but that event informs all of Leslie's decisions and goes some way towards understanding why she makes the decisions she does.

Leslie's destruction at the hands of the Dark Court is hard to watch and while she manages to come out of it towards the end, her journey isn't a pleasant one, even as it makes for compelling reading.

There are some plot issues in this book - a major twist is casually dropped into character exposition when so much more could have been made of it; a few plots go nowhere (this is probably because this book is part of a series) and there is no real resolution for Leslie who moves into a sort of holding pattern, returning to a mortal life while the faeries who love her bide their time in the shadows.

I enjoy Marr's writing and I'll read the next two books in the series but I'll borrow them from the library rather than buy them.

Currently reading: Forbidden Fantasy by Cheryl Holt