Review: Every Last Kiss

Every Last Kiss by Courtney Cole

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genres: historical fantasy romance

Publisher: indie/self-published

Where I got it: Smashwords

Warnings: minor swearing here and there

The review (spoilers past this point):

Magic and mayhem abounds as a creepy priest abruptly interrupts the life of a normal, depressed teen dealing with a cheating boyfriend and sends her back to one of her past lives.

Only... she doesn't have an ordinary past life. All her past lives are directly connected to very important people that she must influence for the good of Fate. In this instance, she's Cleopatra's companion, Charmain, and she must ensure that history plays out exactly the way it is meant to... again. It is a task Charmain finds harder and harder to follow with once she's back in the arms of the man she loved in this life, Hasani.

At first glance, Every Last Kiss appears to be a time-travelling romance. I actually found it to be something else entirely. While Hasani is the almost-perfect romantic icon with good looks and heroic tendencies, the story, to me, was about Girl Power.

The regal queen and loyal hand-maiden team up to tackle repulsive villains, restore Charmain's "birthright" and ensure their own terrible deaths. They do this, knowing that their decisions will also mean the deaths of the people they love. Not an easy choice to bear or share, but by sharing, the book's strongest relationship takes the fore (more so than the romantic relationship).

Having the lead character begin the story as a modern-day teen is an ingenious way to explore a historical era and characters without having to be terribly true to the language of the time. This makes it easy to follow the characters themselves, but can be a little jarring from time to time when Cleopatra says something distinctly modern in phrasing. The brain takes a moment to adjust and get back into it.

The flavours and scents of Ancient Egypt are quite engaging here. I fully expect to be googling for a while to discover more about the people and places mentioned here. The author does note some artistic licence in the acknowledgement, though I don't think I'm too off target by thinking that Egypt is a deeply passionate subject for the author.

I suspect that the next book in the series, will be a prequel (in parts), as we'll probably get to explore the beginnings of a "new" old love, and that, I imagine, is a romantic tale I'll enjoy more. With Fate itself involved, the past was almost set in stone. The present has risks and unseen dangers, and thus greater dangers. It's always the devil you don't know...

Final word
Every Last Kiss could easily leave out the "kiss" and still be a subtle showcase of stoic female characters and the bonds of friendship.



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Review: The Healing Wars 01. The Pain Merchants

The Healing Wars 01. The Pain Merchants by Janice Hardy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Browsing through a packed table of sale books, my eye immediately landed on two words: Pain Merchants. As far as titles go, it's a great one to immediately classify genre and get a fantasy reader like me to grab it without reading the blurb. I wonder if I would have reacted the same way had I had read "The Shifter" on the spine instead. It's a moot question now. I saw. I grabbed. I enjoyed immensely.

The Pain Merchants is a first person tale from the point of view of Nya, an orphaned teenage girl with an extraordinary ability. Nya, of course, doesn't see this ability as particularly good. She is an anomaly in a world with a intriguing system of magic.

The world's magic system is centred on healing. Healers heal wounds and take the pain into themselves. They then transfer the pain into a stone called Pyruvium. This stone is then enchanted to inflict the pain on others during battle. It's a fairly neat symmetrical system, but of course, some chap has to spin that cycle to his own advantage.

Enter the unseen, but presumably nasty Duke. He's been invading and subduing other nations for his own nefarious purpose. I wonder if his title means that there is an unspoken and equally cruel King - the Duke is attacking these nations for *some* reason.

Nya's nation of Gevegian has been crippled by the war, and is now run by the Duke's own Baseeri. Healers and enchanters alike were taken and killed or died fighting. It is for this reason that Nya and her sister were tossed out onto the street to fend for themselves, despite coming from an aristocratic family of healers.

Nya's sister, Tali, is a healer and has been able to find purpose in the League of Healers. Nya can also heal, but she can't safely release the pain into a stone. She can only shift it into other people. She keeps this unusual ability a secret, but someone inevitably finds out. When the city has more pain than rocks or healers, this becomes a huge commodity to those same people.

While Nya has kept her ability a secret for her entire life, it doesn't mean that she is a fearful or morose character, like some characters in similar situations have been. Once her mind is made up, she will face insane odds to protect the ones she loves and those she feels responsible for. It's an admirable trait, and one I suspect is also a forgotten trait of the Gevegians themselves. Her friends and family certainly display this incredible bravery when pushed.

This book sets up a world that is a literal powder-keg with a character that can ignite it in strangely unexpected ways. I look forward to however this war may explode.



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The Company... not your average read

see disclaimer below

I've been quiet on the book review front lately for one simple reason: scripted web fiction.

You all know what web fiction is, and a fair smidgeon of you know what a script is, so of course, I've spent the past couple of weeks reading a total of 24 original web-only teleplays.

I'll go into more detail about scripts and scripted fiction at a later date, but here are the bare facts you need to know.

The Company, created by Sarah-Jane Sheppard, simply... rocks.

Do you love Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls or Dead Like Me? Because that's the kind of quirky, offbeat awesomeness you can expect to encounter in this young adult dramedy.

Meet Vi Morgan, a 16-year-old high school student. One day she's dead. And the next day, she kinda isn't. But her resurrection does come with an interesting price tag: she has to work for "The Company" and keep her secret life, well, secret from her family and friends. You can imagine how well that turns out.

Helping her out, is her scruffy, rebellious, but generally well-meaning mentor, Andrew, the efficient, but damaged, Jenna, and her best friend, the lovable, clumsy, musician-wannabe, Shane. Helping her keep on her toes is her nerdy, but adorkable, brother Cam, her neurotic, writer father, her commanding, but well-meaning mother and her bit-of-a-bitca sister, Penny.

Season one is a mere 13 episodes long, while season two rockets up to a full 22-episode roster. These numbers may seem daunting, but teleplays are a lot faster to read than novels, so it's quite doable to load up your Kindle and nail these beauties in under a week or two. And with Sarah-Jane's seemingly effortless ability to craft easy-to-read scripts, just overflowing with juicy dialogue, addictive character interactions and the occasional serial killer or two, it might even take you faster than that.

And believe me, you'll want to. Season 3 is coming soon!

Read The Company at:

Disclaimer: scripted web series will often use established actors to visually represent fictional characters. These actors are in no way affiliated with the series and are merely used as physical avatars. In fact, quite often, I replace characters with my own favoured actors (just like you'd do when reading novels).