Word Nerd by Susin Nielson

I picked this book up on a whim while I was picking up my last Kelley Armstrong book from the library. It sounded funny, and it was.

Word Nerd is about a 12 year old boy named Ambrose with a peanut allergy and an affinity for Scrabble. He is raised by his overprotective mother, who is driven to shelter her son from the world after her husband suddenly died of a brain aneurism before Ambrose was born. This book is basically about a boy's relationship with his mother, cliche as that may be. Everything he does is driven by his need paradoxical need to break away from her control and the need to protect her.

We are first introduced to Ambrose at school, where three bullies place a peanut into his lunch and almost cause him to die. After this incident, Ambrose's mother decides that Ambrose should stay at home and complete school by correspondence. Meanwhile, their landlord's delinquent son, Cosmo, returns from jail and accidentally becomes Ambrose's best friend. Ambrose helps keep Cosmo out of trouble, and Cosmo helps Ambrose gain self confidence and learn to defend himself. All this occurs around a weekly Scrabble club where Ambrose finally finds a place where he belongs and meets people who appreciate him besides his mom.

I don't normally read contemporary fiction, because I keep expecting it to be deep and profound and hard to read (an unfortunate by product of my post secondary education). So I stick to my scifi, fantasy and romance novels because I know they will be entertaining and won't hurt my brain. This book did not hurt, it read simply, almost too simply, like it was actually written by the boy narrating the story. Which makes sense, but left me wanting a bit more depth because everything was so obvious.

Frostbitten by Kelley Armstrong

Ok... My Kelley Armstrong binge is not quite over yet, but almost. I just have Haunted left to read out of the Women of the Underworld series, but I'm saving that for the my upcoming trip.

Frostbitten is the most recent book of the series, and it is about my original favorite character - Elena the werewolf. Knowing the characters just helps me get into the story right away, and this one jumped right into the story. In this novel, Elena is chasing a rogue, non-pack werewolf (aka. Mutt) across the USA and into Alaska, where she and Clay encounter more man eating werewolves who try to kidnap and rape Elena but of course are trumped and destroyed. We also meet a previously unknown supernatural - Ijiraat, Inuit shapeshifting creatures who live in natural seclusion. In this novel Elena deals with her past, not with Clay, but with her abusive foster fathers. She also deals with the idea that she is in line to be the next Alpha, and works to overcome her personal insecurities on gaining the position.

I really liked this book, just because I've followed Elena's character from the beginning, and it's just nice to see her in a place where her character is genuinely happy, though still a bit insecure. It was really cute to read Elena and Clay's interaction with their children, and their interactions with each other. Clay is less agile and menacing... or older and wiser depending on how you look at it. The pack gains some new potential pack mates, while we meet a few former pack mates who were just so submissive you're glad they were never part of the story.

Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong

I read this one considerably slower than the others just because of two things:1) a slew of new characters, which I imagine will allow Armstrong to branch off and write a new series, potentially. 2)Creepy cult... humans doing bad things to humans while logically justifying their actions is just disgusting to me, and there was a bit of that in this one.

This novel was slow to start because it is partially set around a new character, Robyn Peltier, who is human. So there is a lot of confusion at first, because she doesn't know what's going on, and nobody wants to tell her. Then there is the parallel storyline about Adele Morrissey, the psycho clairvoyant and the world that she lives in that needed to be explained. More confusion, just because neither of the main characters know what they're doing and assume giant leaps in logic... or not so giant leaps depending on how well you understand the world of the book. Hope and Karl are the only characters who were introduced in previous book. The other series characters are often referred to, but none of them take a significant part in the story.

Living with the Dead primarily involves Robyn, who is falsely accused of murder. Her boss accidentally took a photograph of Adele and a member of the Nast Cabal together, and Adele goes out of her way to destroy the evidence. Adele, who is part of a clairvoyant cult, is trying to break out of the cult and sees joining the Nast Cabal as the ideal way of doing it. However, her mind is so twisted by the life she's lived, that she is a sociopath who manipulates and/or kills everyone who gets in her way... and there are quite a few bodies by the end. Hope and Karl are there to help Robyn, who is Hope's best friend from high school. They do their best to save Robyn, while shielding her from the world she accidentally fell into. Hope is still struggling with her powers, and is getting increasingly powerful. Karl is tagging along to keep Hope safe. By the end of the book, Hope and Karl both realize that she needs space to figure out if she can survive without him, because her demon is not something that he can help control all the time. Dropped in the middle of all this is Detective Finn... a LA homicide detective who starts off in charge of Robyn's case and finds himself knee deep in supernatural shit. Over the course of the book, he learns that his ability to see the dead is a mild version of necromancy, and Robyn's dead husband is following him around to save Robyn from a terrible fate.

Living with the Dead is a bit slow, creepy and not my favorite. But now that we've passed the awkward phase when we first meet new people, I imagine I will quite enjoy her new books about this new set of characters whenever they come out.

No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong

I love Kelley Armstrong's books because you don't have to read them in order. And I didn't. But it's so cool because you read a later book, discover that the character you didn't like in an earlier book is actually kinda awesome, so you go back and read the book devoted to that character.

I actually liked Jaime's character from the beginning, but in No Humans Involved I discovered that I kind of like Eve, even though I was kind of thrown off by her reputation with the other characters... but that I think, was intentional because her reputation in the book's world is supposed to be sketchy and seedy - of course that has no bearing on her actual character.

No Humans Involved is Jaime's book, she's in Hollywood, contacting ghosts for a tv special. In the process, she discovers the spirits of children trapped between planes. She researches the situation with the help of Hope, Karl, and Jeremy and discovers a ring of human magicians who have made human sacrifices to gain power. She also manages to convince Jeremy to fall in love with her, despite his reservations. She brings out his fun side, even though it's a little hard to buy, just because he is so different in the other books... but that could be explained by the fact that he is not accompanied by any of the other werewolves in this book... Karl doesn't count.

The story was so interesting, and had enough parallel storylines that I never got bored. I wanted to read Eve's book Haunted right after, but I wasn't able to get my hands on a copy. So, instead I'm going to read Living with the Dead...

Personal Demon by Kelley Armstrong

I started reading Kelley Armstrong a long time ago, and I stopped for awhile because I wasn't as big of a fan of one of her characters. But I found myself coming back recently when I discovered her newer books. Armstrong has created new interesting characters and I quickly fell in love with her writing again.

The writing is good, the plot is engaging, the character development is interesting - what's not to like? I think it's unfortunate that she's put in the same category as LKH because Armstrong's writing is so much better.

Personal Demon is about Hope Adams, half demon, daughter of Lucifer and an East Indian princess. The story is about her efforts to learn to control her powers in a controlled environment. Her power is to see visions of chaos, and feed on the energy. The most powerful high for her is the feeding on someone's chaotic death. She finds it orgasmic but she also knows its wrong and feels revulsed by it. In this novel, Hope is recruited by the Cortez Cabal to work undercover with a supernatural gang and mitigate any damage they could incur. She also figures out how much in love she is with Karl Marsten - rogue werewolf/jewel thief.

Since this book is about the Cortez Cabal, Lucas is in it of course. You get to see how cabals work in more detail and can sort of foresee Lucas taking over... just because his brother is such a bad choice. I'm sure there will be a book on that too in the near future. Fingers crossed.

The book was so good, I immediately picked up one of her other books and devoured it to. Post to follow.