This week, I’m reading two Urban Fantasy novels, both by authors who I’ve read before. One is someone I’m going to give one last try after earlier disappointment and one by is by someone whose horror novels I’ve been enjoying for a while. One is the start of a series and one is a standalone. One is Australian and one is North American. Both books count towards my 2024 TBR Challenge.
‘Blood Kissed’ (2017) by Keri Arthur
My earlier experiences with Keri Arthur were not encouraging. In 2016, I read her short story ‘Christmas Past‘ in ‘Wolfsbane and Mistletoe‘. It was an urban fantasy rom-com that was witty enough but a little too heavy on the romantic clichés for my taste. In 2017, I read ‘City Of Light‘, the first book in her ‘Outcast’ series. Although It had a strong plot and an intriguing main character, it was undermined by the kind of careless or lazy writing that a second draft or a decent editor could have fixed.
I decided to give her latest series a try because the reviews from people I follow on GoodReads are positive. I’m hoping that this book won’t be too heavily tilted towards romance or, at least, not in a genre-typical way.
If everything works out, then there are another eleven Lizzie Grace books in print for me to read. If the writing is poor then this will be an early DNF.
Keri Arthur, the author of the Riley Jenson Guardian series, has written more than fifty-five novels–35 of them with traditional publishers Random House /Penguin/ Piatkus. She is now fully self-published.
She’s won six Australian Romance Readers Awards for Favourite Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or Futuristic Romance & the Romance Writers of Australia RBY Award for Speculative Fiction.
Her Lizzie Grace series won ARRA’s Fav Continuing Romance Series in 2022 and she has in the past won The Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Urban Fantasy.
When she’s not at her computer writing the next book, she can be found somewhere in the Australian countryside taking photos.
‘Mongrels’ (2016) by Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones became a favourite author of mine in 2021 when I read, ‘The Only Good Indians‘ and ‘My Heart Is A Chainsaw‘ both of which were five-star reads for me.
When I was planning to reduce my TBR in 2024, I discovered that an earlier Stephen Graham Jones novel, ‘Mongrels‘ had been on my shelves since 2017. So now I’m looking forward to seeing what Stephen Graham Jones was writing immediately before ‘The Only Good Indians‘.
Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of nearly thirty novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well.
Stephen’s been an NEA recipient, has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award, ALA’s RUSA Award and Alex Award, the 2023 American Indian Festival of Words Writers Award, the Locus Award, four Bram Stoker Awards, three Shirley Jackson Awards, six This is Horror Awards, and he’s been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award. He’s also made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels, and is the guy who wrote Mongrels, The Only Good Indians, My Heart is a Chainsaw, and Earthdivers.
Up next are The Angel of Indian Lake and I Was a Teenage Slasher and True Believers. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado.
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