Order of Earth by Jennifer Cornet @J_Cornet #ReviewShare #YA #UrbanFantasy

Order of Earth by Jennifer Cornet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The best urban fantasy book I have read in a long time and I am definitely looking forward to the next book in the series. Order of the Earth is also a coming of age story. I like that it was filled with supernatural, fantasy. The plot was well developed and interesting.

The description of the book is but a taste of what is to come. Nothing prepares you for Onyx’s story. This book maybe for a young adult audience but an adult reader will also enjoy it. It is a well written story with enough detail to keep you interested without too many boring or unnecessary descriptions. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a good fantasy read with a strong female lead.

Disclosure - As a Quality Reads UK Book Club member, I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I received no monetary compensation for my book review. This book review is based on my thoughts, opinion and understanding of the book. This book review does not reflect the opinion of other book club members.


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Order of Earth (Elements of Ink) by Jennifer Cornet @J_Cornet #Fantasy #GoodReads #TBR

Onyx looked at herself one last time in the bathroom mirror. Her shiny, jet black hair flowed over her shoulders like liquid satin; the blunt bangs stopping just under her eyebrows. Her deep brown eyes smoldered through the black smudged smoky eye shadow. The black sequined mini-dress her friend Angel had given her for the occasion hung on her curves making her feel like a vixen: powerful and sexy. The feeling was intoxicating. She bit her crimson lip, Philip would not approve, she thought. Good thing he was on a business trip till tomorrow.

It felt good to look sexy. She had been stuck in this ivory penthouse for months now without seeing her friends. All Onyx wanted was a night to unwind and relax; take a break from being the perfect girlfriend. Philip was great and all, but he could be a bit demanding. The rules kept adding up: no tattoos showing in public, no “sexy” clothing, no foul language, only hang out with people he approves of, always act like a lady. It was exhausting to be with him sometimes. They had been together for almost two years now, but to Onyx, it felt like a lot longer.

Weeks like this were the key to her sanity. Every couple months or so Philip would go on a business trip to headquarters for some big meeting. And for those brief few days, Onyx could be her old self again.

Before she met Philip, she was just another struggling artist, trying to make it on her own. She lived with a group of four other girls in an artist apartment. They would post their work in the hallways for sale or bring them down to the beach front to sell to tourists. The building they lived in, entirely comprised of fellow creative souls, put on a Christmas art show in hopes to get some much needed cash before the holidays. And that’s where Onyx and Philip met. Their chemistry was instantaneous and explosive. The odd couple, a tattoo covered artist and a button-down business man, simply could not get enough of each other. Within two weeks he had moved her into his penthouse apartment in downtown Miami.

At first, the fiery passion between them was all they needed. They would lose themselves in each other for hours on end. He was late to work constantly and she spent less and less time painting, opting for a few more moments wrapped up in each other instead. They were in their own little world where she was the beautiful, adoring girlfriend and he was the supportive, loving boyfriend. It was everything Onyx had ever longed for. But as the lusty fog of the afterglow began to lift, the reality of their relationship settled on her like chains.

First came the wardrobe. Onyx had come home one afternoon from a jog to find her closet had been gutted. All her raggedy band t-shirts and holey jeans had been replaced by what Philip deemed “a more respectable wardrobe.” He had told her it was a gift, and that she didn’t need to dress like she was poor anymore; all his wealth was hers. She deserved nice things, he would say. She should look like his match. When Onyx asked why her tattoos were completely covered by all her new clothes he had told her he didn’t want anyone to judge her on such a superficial thing. “People would be cruel,” he said, “and think less of her for her body art, so better not to give them the chance.” Philip’s words had felt so deeply sincere that she couldn’t bring herself to be mad. She had never argued the point that his tattoos, mostly the one on his wrist, showed even when he wore a business suit. The argument hardly seemed worth it.

Then came the cell phone. One day, she had gone to text her best friend, Angel, but the contact name was no longer saved in her phone. She scrolled through all the listings only to find almost all her friend’s numbers had been removed. But then she then realized he hadn’t just deleted a couple numbers, he had changed her phone out completely. It was a whole new phone, with a new number. He said it was an honest mistake. He had only been trying to do the right thing by getting an unlisted number for her. He was a powerful man, and he didn’t want anyone coming after his sweet girlfriend because her phone was vulnerable. The man at the store must have not transferred all the contacts, “but good riddance” he said.

People like Angel were unpredictable and reckless. She was a danger to their relationship and should be cut from their lives anyway. Slowly, one by one, Philip cut her off from her friends until all she had left was him. He truly is trying to protect me, she had thought. But now that she was alone in this sterile house all the time, she wasn’t so sure. She felt like Rapunzel, trapped in her tower. But tonight, she was letting down her long black hair and sneaking out for a little fun.

For Onyx Bay, what started as a cathartic ink session takes an unexpected turn when a specialized blood test at the tattoo parlor reveals her true identity, which threatens to turn her entire world upside down.

When Onyx learns that she is the descendant of a fantastical race of creatures who control the global elements, she discovers that her own blood makes her a valuable prize for competing forces, known as the Orders. As the truth about her bloodline spreads, she finds herself at the center of a supernatural bounty hunt pursued by both human and creature members of the Orders willing to do anything to claim her as their own. The hunt intensifies when a prophet foresees she will tip the balance of power and upset the peace among the Orders. As she attempts to evade capture and survive, Onyx is forced to choose between her humanistic past and a supernatural destiny in order to take control of her own future.

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Genre - Urban Fantasy

Rating – PG – 13

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Website http://www.jennifercornet.com/

Cast in Blood (Morgan Blackstone) by Michelle Rabe @MichRabe #Paranormal #Fantasy #TBR

NEW ORLEANS SEP 4, 2009

The Assassin’s voice boomed through the closed double doors to the study for the fifth time since he’d entered the room with Morgan’s Blood Sons, almost five hours before.  Marcus cringed as the doors were flung open, and Nicholas strode out, rage radiating from every inch of his six–foot, four–inch frame. Storm–gray eyes landed on Marcus, narrowed to slits, and he stalked past, commanding him to follow with an imperious wave of his right hand. Not wanting to piss the Assassin off more, Marcus bit back a snide comment, and followed him up the sweeping staircase to the mansion’s upper floors.

“Damn it all to hell, Old Man!” Nicholas roared as he began pacing the landing at the top of the stairs. He wanted Marcus to throw himself against his temper to take the edge off.

Ye Gods, Marcus thought, we’ve done this more times than I’d care to count in the centuries we’ve known one another, but this is different. Well, something other than the fact that we’ve barely spoken a civil word to one another in almost two hundred years.

“I take it the boys couldn’t add anything to what we already knew. In spite of the almost five hour interrogation?” Marcus asked, fighting to rein in his own temper, leaning against the banister at the top of the stairs.

“Five hours?” Nicholas stopped moving. He turned to Marcus, meeting his eyes. The other vampire nodded.  “It was really that long?”

“Yes. What’s next, Assassin?” Marcus asked, letting some of the frustration he felt give his voice a hard edge. The last thing they needed right now was for Nicholas to go soft.

“We can’t do anything before the sun sets,” he said, after giving Marcus a long, appraising look.

He’s assessed my well–being and decided I’m not fit for the field. I’ve seen that look too many times before and know better than to argue with him, Marcus thought, trying to work out a logical counter argument.

“I haven’t slept.” Nicholas sighed. “You look like death warmed over and those two are rattled.” He nodded toward the room where he’d left the younger vampires.

“Fine.” Marcus nodded. “I took the liberty of having my staff get us some SUVs. If Morgan’s alive, she’s going to need fresh blood. We’re going to need the extra room.” Marcus was almost certain that he didn’t have to mention that, but the desperate look in Nicholas’s eyes led him to believe that there was no such thing as being too careful in this situation.

“She has to be alive, Marcus.”

“We’ll find her.” Marcus answered, feeling like an ass for lying. We both know that the odds suck. This could be nothing more than trying to find her body. Gods, whoever did this is going to pay.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” the Assassin muttered, looking through Marcus. Nicholas’s mind was turning over what he knew, making connections and searching for others.

“How so?” Marcus asked, prompting Nicholas to think aloud, knowing it helped him make connections he otherwise missed, and it gave Marcus the opportunity to make a few as well.

“The security footage Danny sent over from the club’s parking lot shows Morgan and her attackers, but never their faces.”

“The club has cameras outside?”

“Apparently one of the human staff had some trouble right after the club opened. Morgan had them installed after that.”

“They could have scoped out the cameras. Not too difficult when you know what to look for,” Marcus muttered, his brows drawn together. “Why didn’t anyone see her being attacked, if it was caught on camera? Why are we just learning about this now? Just because she somehow jacked my mind and knocked me flat on my ever–loving ass.” Marcus’s words sped up as he continued, agitation given voice.

“The footage is stored on massive hard drives but not reviewed unless an incident is reported. Since no one reported her disappearance…” Nicholas’s voice trailed off.

“I have a feeling Morgan will be revising that policy when she returns.”

“If she returns.”

To the outside world, Morgan Blackstone is an eccentric business woman. But, in her chest beats the undead heart of a 21st century vampire. Behind the doors of her nightclub, The Dracul, Morgan rules with an iron fist in a velvet glove.

After a long night of wrangling unruly supernatural customers, she is looking forward to some peace… but unbeknownst to her, there are other vampires who are conspiring against her. Just before dawn, in the deserted parking lot, she comes face-to-face with two old adversaries, one of which she had last seen being sealed in a tomb, 400 years before.

Overpowered by her attackers, Morgan wakes inside the lab of an unscrupulous doctor. Held against her will, subjected to experiments, she soon realizes that something has begun to burn within her veins…

Something that she knows will kill her.

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Genre - Paranormal Urban Fantasy

Rating – PG-13

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Website http://paperbackvamp.tumblr.com/

NIGHT'S FAVOUR by Richard Parry @TactualRain #GoodReads #Thriller #Action

The van stuck out of the wall of Elephant Blues as if it had been thrown there, the skid marks of the tyres showing where it had veered before jumping the curb.  One door on the back was missing — they still hadn't found it — and the other hung loose on a single hinge, its handle missing.  The laminated glass of its single window lay in a spider-webbed sheet on the pavement, a hole torn through the middle.

A hand sat beside it, the pool of blood being diluted in the rain.  It was a left hand, but no wedding ring — strong fingers, definitely a man's.  It lay palm up, fingers curled like a dead insect.  The fingernails were carefully trimmed and surprisingly clean, as if the guy had managed a manicure just before having it torn off.  At least — it looked torn; not cut, not sawn, but torn.  The bones of the arm stuck out from the stump, the stark white ends free of other tissue.  Big floodlights kicked back the night, the fingers of the hand stretching tall shadows along the sidewalk.  They hadn't found the rest of the body — not out here.

It might be in the pile inside.

“Think he punched through the glass?  Maybe got out?  Lost his hand that way?”  Elliot chewed on the end of his pen.

“Nah.”  Carlisle shuffled her feet through the puddles on the wet sidewalk, trying to get the bottom of her soles clean.  She was getting rained on, and her pants were starting to stick to her.  Well, more than they already were — Carlisle glanced at her red-stained knee and clamped down on the shudder.  She should have kept her overcoat on, but inside the heat had made her want to retch, the memory of the slaughterhouse reek still with her.  Carlisle tried to loosen her pants, but they were plastered on — God damn. “Knuckles are fine, and that's safety glass.  No cuts on the wrist, not that I can see.  Almost looks chewed.  We’ve got to find the arm...  Jesus, Vince.  There’s so many people in there.”  Rain was running down the back of her collar.  “And they’re all dead.  How’re we getting on with a witness check?”

“No one saw shit.  I swear the only way we'd have less witnesses is if this was a Foundation for the Blind annual meet.  Connolly and Malloney are in there too.  Somewhere.  They were good guys.  Fuck’s sake.”  Elliot offered his umbrella to Carlisle.  “You're going to die of hypothermia.  Take the umbrella.”

It was pink, with Hello Kitty motifs in the fabric, a cheap white handle at the bottom.  Carlisle snorted.  “Where'd you get that thing?”

Elliot tilted it, looking at it as if for the first time.  “You know, I really can't remember.  It might have been the evidence locker.”  He shrugged.  “I'm not buying an umbrella.  Too damn windy around here.  I’ll call their families.”

“Management thinking, buddy.  Keep it, it's more your colour.  Leave the calls to me.  I knew Connolly, a little.”  Carlisle looked inside the van, taking in the straps tethered to one side.  There was some kind of harness, big enough for a man, but it was hard to tell with it all shredded like that.  “I'd bet you your next night shift that those straps are nylon.”  She reached into a pocket, rescuing a stick of gum.  Chewing, she stepped up into the van, wiping her wet blonde — and just a little grey, right? — hair away from her face.  She used the end of a pen to poke through the remains of the harness.  Definitely torn — the frayed ends of the nylon hanging down from the steel wall, which had been pulled in slightly with whatever force had torn the straps.  A bench seat was opposite the harness.

She took in the bullet holes on the wall with the harness.  She'd noticed them before, but just how many hadn’t sunk in.  Lots of them — a quick eyeball said twenty or thirty rounds had been unloaded in here.  Someone on the bench seat had fired into the opposite wall, probably into whoever was in that harness.  Blood was smeared down the steel wall, with a small puddle on the ground.  Not a lot — not enough for a guy with a bunch of shells in him.  Casings lay on the floor of the van, the bright of the brass distinct against the carpet.  Two machine pistols shared space with them.  No damn bodies though.

They were all inside.

“You need…  Just come here.”  The tone of Elliot's voice brought her out of the van in a rush, almost turning her ankle in the rain.  She just missed — shit — the severed hand, nearly stumbling head first into the street.  Elliot was looking up — above the van, the blood running down its white paint stark even at night.  Carlisle followed his gaze to above the overhang of the Elephant Blues.  A bronze elephant about the size of a small car sat on top, trunk proudly raised to the sky, one foot lifted.  Elliot was staring at the elephant.

A body had been impaled on the trunk, easy to miss in the darkness.  No head.  Carlisle recovered first.  “Different guy.”

“What?”  Elliot was a heartbeat behind, still shaken.

“Body's still got both hands.  Just no head.  Closest thing to a full corpse I’ve seen all night.”  

The ragged ends of tissue, tendons, and the spine stuck out from the torso of the corpse. Blood was being washed down from the body onto the awning, onto the van, and into the street.  “I hope Forensics did their thing out here.  Our evidence is being rinsed away.”

Elliot shrugged, just a little.  “They got worse problems.  Not one of them is going to see their wife for a week, the amount of reassembly needed in there.”

“Probably won’t see lunch for a week, either.”  No way you could have pastrami on rye after spending time in the Blues this evening.  Nodding to herself, Carlisle walked over to the squad car.  It had mounted the curb, nosing up behind the van, but back ten or fifteen feet.  

Both doors were still open, lights on, but no siren.  It wasn’t that the car had done the chase running silent; the siren was missing, the ends of wires sticking out next to where it had been mounted.  The trunk was open, the shotgun missing — the officers had probably left the car in a hurry, but the lack of bullet holes in the car suggested it hadn’t been under fire.  

The patrol unit had made the call in for support a half hour ago; it’d been Connolly on the radio, panic in his voice.  A car chase in the centre of the city, with shots fired, real gangster stuff.  No idea on number of people involved, no idea who was shooting, no idea why.  Just shots fired — in pursuit — and then silence.  They'd tracked the car by the GPS in it, finding it here at Elephant Blues.  The engine was still running.

It made no sense.  A half hour was a long time.  Long enough for two good cops to die.  Not long enough for their bodies to be cold.  If they could confirm which bodies — which parts — were theirs.

The first evidence that Connolly and Malloney had made an armed response came at the entrance to the bar.  Two spent casings were on the ground alongside broken glass and wood splinters.  The officers had gone in for a lethal response.  They’d gone into the bar, to be lost in the chaos of whatever had gone down in the Elephant Blues.

Carlisle looked over at Elliot, who was still looking up at the body on the elephant.  “Look, stop fucking around over there.  Have you found the CCTV system?”

“I found where it was.  You know the bar?”

“Sure.  I stepped over twenty smashed bottles of spirits.  My socks smell of Midori.”

“That’s not what your socks smell of.  But — look.  You know it’s crazy in there, right?  Tables, chairs thrown around.  Looks like some kind of Chuck Norris fight remake.”

“Silent Rage.”  Carlisle swallowed as something hysterical tried to bubble through.  She hadn’t seen that movie in years.

“What?”

“Silent Rage.  That’s the movie with the bar fight.  Dan — I mean Norris — was in the bar...”  Carlisle trailed off.  “Whatever.  What about it?”

“Right.”  Elliot gestured into the bar.  “One of the tables was thrown right through the bar.  Sort of unlucky.  It went through the DVR.”

“You’re shitting me.  Sort of unlucky?  Through it?  A thousand places the table could have gone —”

“Be fair, sister.  The tables did go a thousand places.  One of them was through the DVR.”

“You’re telling me we’ve got the bloodbath of the century in there, like someone’s syphoning the local abattoir through the sprinkler system, and we’ve got no footage?”

Elliot looked at his feet.  “Yeah.”

“Fuck.”  Carlisle remembered her first steps down into the Blues that evening, seeing the tables knocked over, chairs thrown around.  Blood, bits of tissue — there, someone's blood-drenched scarf — were everywhere inside the bar.  The shelf that held spirits was shattered, the remains of Midori and Galliano and fifty other types of bottled joy mingling with the sea of blood on the ground.  Carlisle’s non-skid shoe covers had slipped anyway, and she’d fallen heavily on one knee in the gore.  The hand she’d thrown out to steady herself had come back sticky with blood, the latex covering red and tacky.  It was the first time she’d thrown up at crime scene in years.

She shook herself out of the memory.  So her expensive suit would need dry-cleaning; that was just part of the job.  “We might need to wait on Forensics then.”

Elliot nodded, pulling his jacket tighter over the belly middle age and too much time behind a desk had given him.  “Hell of a night.”

“Yeah.”  Carlisle absently wiped water off her face.  “Hell of a night.”

Valentine’s an ordinary guy with ordinary problems. His boss is an asshole. He’s an alcoholic. And he’s getting that middle age spread just a bit too early. One night — the one night he can’t remember — changes everything. What happened at the popular downtown bar, The Elephant Blues? Why is Biomne, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, so interested in him — and the virus he carries? How is he getting stronger, faster, and more fit? And what’s the connection between Valentine and the criminally insane Russian, Volk?

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Genre – Action, Thriller, Urban Fantasy

Rating – R16

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 Connect with Richard Parry on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.rage.net.nz