Yahoo! Another collection of short stories/novellas by some of my fave authors!
Patricia Briggs writes the Mercy Thompson series (with another book in that series coming out January '08), one of my new discoveries. Her entry is "Alpha and Omega", an interesting tale of werewolves. Anna, a relatively new werewolf, is reading her evening paper when she recognizes a picture of a boy who has gone missing. She knows that he isn't really missing; he's dead. He was turned into a werewolf against his will, something she knows all too well. Realizing that her pack alpha may have finally gone too far, she calls the Marrok, the leader of all the werewolves. He sends his son, Charles, to Chicago to investigate. Anna is nervous, and tries her best to stay out of the way. Charles grows more upset the longer he's around her as he realizes how much she has been beaten down by her pack. She thinks she's a submissive but he knows how wrong that is - she is actually an Omega, one of the most powerful types of werewolf next to an alpha. An Omega can calm a pack in almost an instant, something that leads Charles to suspect that Anna was specifically chosen to be turned, even though she had no say in the matter. Now he must find out why her Alpha needs an Omega in his pack....
Eileen Wilks also writes a series involving werewolves, called lupi. Her story "Inhuman" is very interesting and again, quite good. Kai is magically gifted but doesn't let on to her friends exactly what her gift is. They believe she's an empath, which is mostly true. Actually, she's a telepath. Not only that but she can take the thoughts of others and manipulate them if she's not careful. It's not that she actually knows what they're thinking; she sees the colors of their auras and can decipher from those what's going on with a person. She knows her neighbor, Nathan, is also gifted in some way; she's just not sure what his gift is. Turns out, he may not even be human! When Nathan shows up at her door one night needing a bullet dug out of his shoulder, Kai will learn his secret. She's also learn a few things about herself...
Karen Chance has started a nice little dark fantasy series involving witches, vampires, and the like. "Buying Trouble" is a great little tale of Claire, a null - someone who can actually absorb and interfere with magic. Nulls are far and few between these days, mostly because they've been hunted to the point of extinction; a null must be sacrificed to create a "null-bomb", a sort of reverse grenade for the magical crowd. Claire works at an auction house and has the night of her life when she realizes that she is actually one of the items up for auction. Her slimy cousin Sebastian wants her out of the way so that he can collect his inheritance without needing to share. There's also the tidy sum he'll get for selling her to highest bidder in the mage crowd. Enter Heidar, a Light Fey who also wants Claire, for reasons not entirely known to her. In one of the best chaotic fight scenes I've read in a while, Claire and Heidar are suddenly thrust into Fairie, a place that brings several surprises to both of them....
Finally, there's "Mona Lisa Betwining" by Sunny. I haven't read anything by this author, and I have to say, this will probably be the last time I read her. This story was a little too Laurell K. Hamilton for me, what with a sort of demon curse thing making a hormonal nutcase of the lead character, Mona Lisa. Sorry, but I'm not into that sort of writing anymore. I think I would also have had to read the author's books before this story to truly make sense of it, something the other three entries didn't suffer from. I don't mind if an author's submission is going to tie-in to his/her series work, but make it general enough for the people who haven't been with you from the start.
Overall, "On the Prowl" was a nice anthology of the supernatural. Just enough romance to be pleasing, plenty of plot in the first three stories, and some interesting characters who may be showing up again very soon.
Patricia Briggs writes the Mercy Thompson series (with another book in that series coming out January '08), one of my new discoveries. Her entry is "Alpha and Omega", an interesting tale of werewolves. Anna, a relatively new werewolf, is reading her evening paper when she recognizes a picture of a boy who has gone missing. She knows that he isn't really missing; he's dead. He was turned into a werewolf against his will, something she knows all too well. Realizing that her pack alpha may have finally gone too far, she calls the Marrok, the leader of all the werewolves. He sends his son, Charles, to Chicago to investigate. Anna is nervous, and tries her best to stay out of the way. Charles grows more upset the longer he's around her as he realizes how much she has been beaten down by her pack. She thinks she's a submissive but he knows how wrong that is - she is actually an Omega, one of the most powerful types of werewolf next to an alpha. An Omega can calm a pack in almost an instant, something that leads Charles to suspect that Anna was specifically chosen to be turned, even though she had no say in the matter. Now he must find out why her Alpha needs an Omega in his pack....
Eileen Wilks also writes a series involving werewolves, called lupi. Her story "Inhuman" is very interesting and again, quite good. Kai is magically gifted but doesn't let on to her friends exactly what her gift is. They believe she's an empath, which is mostly true. Actually, she's a telepath. Not only that but she can take the thoughts of others and manipulate them if she's not careful. It's not that she actually knows what they're thinking; she sees the colors of their auras and can decipher from those what's going on with a person. She knows her neighbor, Nathan, is also gifted in some way; she's just not sure what his gift is. Turns out, he may not even be human! When Nathan shows up at her door one night needing a bullet dug out of his shoulder, Kai will learn his secret. She's also learn a few things about herself...
Karen Chance has started a nice little dark fantasy series involving witches, vampires, and the like. "Buying Trouble" is a great little tale of Claire, a null - someone who can actually absorb and interfere with magic. Nulls are far and few between these days, mostly because they've been hunted to the point of extinction; a null must be sacrificed to create a "null-bomb", a sort of reverse grenade for the magical crowd. Claire works at an auction house and has the night of her life when she realizes that she is actually one of the items up for auction. Her slimy cousin Sebastian wants her out of the way so that he can collect his inheritance without needing to share. There's also the tidy sum he'll get for selling her to highest bidder in the mage crowd. Enter Heidar, a Light Fey who also wants Claire, for reasons not entirely known to her. In one of the best chaotic fight scenes I've read in a while, Claire and Heidar are suddenly thrust into Fairie, a place that brings several surprises to both of them....
Finally, there's "Mona Lisa Betwining" by Sunny. I haven't read anything by this author, and I have to say, this will probably be the last time I read her. This story was a little too Laurell K. Hamilton for me, what with a sort of demon curse thing making a hormonal nutcase of the lead character, Mona Lisa. Sorry, but I'm not into that sort of writing anymore. I think I would also have had to read the author's books before this story to truly make sense of it, something the other three entries didn't suffer from. I don't mind if an author's submission is going to tie-in to his/her series work, but make it general enough for the people who haven't been with you from the start.
Overall, "On the Prowl" was a nice anthology of the supernatural. Just enough romance to be pleasing, plenty of plot in the first three stories, and some interesting characters who may be showing up again very soon.
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