I am thrilled to host Paddy O’Brien at Book’d Out today. Paddy O’Reilly’s latest novel, The Fine Colour of Rust, will be released in March, 2012 in Australia, the UK and the USA. The Fine Colour of Rust is a wryly funny, beautifully observed, life-affirming novel about friendship, love and fighting for things that matter. I was charmed by the protagonist, Loretta Boskovic, a single mother living in the tiny town of Gunapan, Australia and gave the novel a five star review.

Paddy’s short story collection, The End of the World (UQP) was released to critical acclaim in April, 2007. The stories in the collection have won a number of national and international story awards including ‘The Age’, the ‘Judah Waten’, ‘Zoetrope All-Story’ (USA) and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation (UK). The End of the World was chosen as one of the year’s best books in various publications from Australian Book Review to The Financial Review. It was shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Her debut novel, The Factory, was also in the best books of the year lists in Australian Book Review and the Sydney Morning Herald and was Highly Commended in the FAW Christina Stead Award for Fiction.  It was broadcast in fifteen episodes as the ABC Radio National Book Reading during July 2009. Her novella ‘Deep Water’ was published in 2007 as one of four in the novella anthology, Love and Desire. She has also written screenplays and worked as additional screenwriter for films which have been nominated for AFI awards and screened nationally and internationally.

Paddy has been Asialink writer-in-residence in Japan, a fellow at Varuna: the Writers’ House, writer-in-residence at Kelly Steps Cottage, Tasmania, and The Lockup, Newcastle, presenter and reader at the International Conference on the Short Story in Toronto and a full fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, USA. Paddy spent several years working as a copywriter in Japan. She now lives in Melbourne, Australia.

How to Speak in a Book

My stories and books have been set in places all around the world, some taken from life, some invented. Each setting presents its own writing challenges, and several have been to do with the language of the place.

The Factory is a novel set in an arts colony on a mountain in Japan. One of the first decisions I had to make was dealing with dialogue. On the mountain, my two Australian characters were speaking English between themselves and Japanese to the native residents. The Japanese obviously spoke Japanese to each other. Sometimes, one of the Japanese characters would slip into English to say something to the Australians that he didn’t want his fellow Japanese to understand. The text of my book would all be in English, but how could I make clear, without mentioning it each time, which language was being spoken?

Looking through other books with a similar conundrum, I found that some authors wrote the non-English dialogue in a kind of broken English. That seemed a very unsatisfying way to handle the problem, as it made the location’s native speakers sound like they were in the wrong country. I thought that if you were going to use that technique, you should at least make the English speakers the ones unable to put a sentence together grammatically, since they were speaking the foreign language. Another solution some authors tried was giving the non-English speakers a kind of patois – grammatically correct but spiced up with occasional words and phrases from the language of the location. Again, it seemed awkward, non? Then there was the attempt to use the syntax of the location language in the dialogue. ‘But, signor, your automobile, she is broken!’ which made me feel like I’d landed in an episode of Fawlty Towers.

In the end, my solution was the simplest. Trust the reader. I left the dialogue as natural speech. If I felt there was ambiguity I would tag the line of dialogue with a hint of the language used, but I soon discovered that I hardly needed to do that. Readers are smart. They figure this stuff out.

Another dialogue problem arose when I found myself writing a story called ‘Speak to Me’ about a tiny alien landing in someone’s backyard. It sounds like an weird concept, and maybe it is, but the story is actually very down to earth (excuse my pun) and human.  This was a case where a tricky problem raised by the emerging plot of the story ended up forging one of the major themes of the work ­– how we communicate. As I was writing, a major concern was how to get my female protagonist speaking with an alien from another galaxy who looked like a small piece of seafood. No mouth, my character thought. Arms with sensitive suction pads. So she borrowed braille books from the library – first the alphabet, then novels – and the smart critter learned to read English. Trouble was, the library only had Regency romances in braille, so the alien learned to communicate like this: ‘Dear Lady, if you will allow me to express my feelings…’

My latest book, The Fine Colour of Rust, is set in a small country town in Victoria. I’d done the hard research, having lived in Warburton and Ballarat, driven around the state several times, and also spent a lot of time on a bush block in a tiny hamlet in Golden Plains Shire. My protagonist, Loretta, originally comes from Melbourne, but she’s been living in Gunapan long enough to pick up a hint of the local drawl. One of the original residents is her best friend Norm, the old junk man, who has been speaking Gunapan-style all his life.

I had no intention of creating some hokey country lingo, or a Henry Lawson feel. Yet I did want to capture that laconic pace you encounter in small country towns: the half-finished sentence that only an idiot wouldn’t understand; the silent dialogue between blokes expressed in shifts in the position of the feet and a bit of carefully timed nodding; the sudden smart comment that snaps past you like a whip crack; the exasperation at the state of the world bubbling through the pretend couldn’t-care-less attitude.

I found as I wrote the dialogue for these characters that, again, the writing process itself helped me to understand my characters better. Through their dialogue they came alive. Norm is the kind of bloke who plays everything down. In his parlance, a Level 6 cyclone would be ‘a bit blowy’. A partly severed finger would be a ‘scratch’.

The other day I met a man from Queensland who used that kind of understatement. I was commiserating with him about the floods.

‘Yep,’ he said, ‘a bit more rain than usual.’

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Learn more about Paddy O’Reilly by visiting her website or following her on twitter

The Fine Colour of Rust is Available to Purchase

Australia: @ BoomerangBooks I @Booktopia

International: @ Amazon US I @ Amazon UK I  @ BookDepository

Mari at Bookworm With A View (mpartyka)

who has won

The Underside of Joy by Sere Prince Halverson

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Congratulations to

Chinoiseries of Always Cooking Up Something

who has won her choice of book from the

Literary Blog Hop

To those who entered the Literary Blog Hop, I want to thank you for the many kind and friendly notes you left me for me!

(All winners are chosen via random.org)

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Title: The Fine Colour of Rust

Author: P.A. O’Reilly

Published: Harper Collins Australia Feb 2012

Synopsis: Single mother and dreamer Loretta Boskovic lives in Gunapan, a town lost in the scrubby Australian bush. She has fantasies about dumping her two kids in the orphanage and riding off on a Harley with her dream lover. Her best pal is a crusty old junk man called Norm. She needs a lawnmower; he gives her two goats called Terror and Panic.
Loretta’s a self-dubbed ‘old scrag’, but she’s got a big heart and a strong sense of injustice. So when the government threatens to close down Gunapan’s primary school, and there’s a whiff of corruption wafting through the corridors of the local council, Loretta stirs into action. She may be short of money, influence and a fully functioning car, but she has loyal friends. Together they can organise protests, supermarket sausage sizzles, a tour of the abattoir — whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home.

Status: Read from January 26 to 28, 2012 — I own a copy  {Courtesy Harper Collins Australia/NetGalley}

My Thoughts:

Left behind in Gunapan by her lousy husband with her two children, Loretta Boskovic drives the dusty road from her house to town, staring out at the scrubby bushland dreaming of rescue by a handsome lover and a car radio that gets something other than racing commentary. In this unique, wryly observed novel, Paddy O’Reilly captures the essence of a lonely Australian bush town and it’s ordinary residents with humour and heart.
The author’s protagonist is a woman you will find in any small town, she is a single mother juggling child raising with work, a budget that only allows for discounted undies and a longing for an intimate relationship. Loretta copes with the spareness of her life with a wicked sense of humour, and roll-up-your-sleeves and get-on-with-it attitude. Her children are everything to her, even though she regularly fantasises about being whisked away from their whining demands. Raising her two children on her own isn’t easy, they miss their father and his sudden (though mercifully brief) reappearance seems to trigger their worst instincts leaving Loretta floundering.

In an unconscious effort to stave off her loneliness, Loretta rallies the community in an effort to stop the closure of their school and when that is accomplished, finds a new cause involving a shady development deal and corruption Councillors. In a small town like Gunapan the community is the lifeblood of the town and depends on its’ residents to fight for it to stay alive. Loretta isn’t completely alone, her neighbour, Norm – a laconic and slightly eccentric collector – is her dearest friend and champion. Her best friend is also a single woman on the prowl and in a community like Gunupan everyone knows everyone else.
Small urban towns rarely get much attention in fiction with the dazzling Sydney Harbour or wild, romantic outback providing more popular and scenic backdrops. It is rare to find Australian novels with a vivid sense of such a place but O’Reilly evokes this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, slowly dying as services and amenities disappear. Public swimming pools are drained and sports fields are unplayable thanks to the extended drought and the youth grow up and leave for greener pastures.

Loretta’s every day life in an ordinary town makes for a surprisingly compelling story. The Fine Colour of Rust is a character driven novel that also addresses a variety of themes such as social injustice and inequality within a subtly layered plot. It will make you laugh and cry and is a fine example of contemporary Australian fiction that captures the essence of who we are, and who we want to be.

I am thrilled to be hosting a guest post by Paddy O’Reilly at Book’d Out tomorrow. Make sure you visit! In the meantime listen to her talk about The Fine Colour of Rust in the short video below.

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Available to Purchase

Australia: @ BoomerangBooks I @Booktopia

International: @ Amazon US I @ Amazon UK I  @ BookDepository

Title: Five Bells

Author: Gail Jones

Published: Picador Feb 2012 (first published Random House Australia 2011)

Synopsis: On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water. But just as Circular Quay resonates with Australia’s past, each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere. Each person is haunted by past secrets and guilt. Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin, and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China’s Cultural Revolution. Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives that come to share not only a place and a time but also mysterious patterns and ambiguous symbols, including a barely glimpsed fifth figure, a young child. By nightfall, when Sydney is drenched in a summer rainstorm, each life will have been transformed by the events of this day

Status: Read from February 12 to 13, 2012 — I own a copy {Courtesy Picador/NetGalley}

My Thoughts:

Gail Jones begins Five Bells with an evocative depiction of a sunny day in Sydney’s Circular Quay. I felt as if I stood in amongst the ebb and flow of the crowd, feeling the sun on my face, scenting the salt air, hearing the chug of the ferry and the squeal of a slowing train. From the corner of my eye I can almost see Ellie gazing at the water, Pei Qing exchanging a few dollars for an ice-cream, James frowning absently at the crowds, Catherine shading her eyes against the sun to watch the climbers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the delighted giggle of a little girl with pink clips in her hair.

From the first pages the language of this novel is powerfully lyrical. Jones introduces her characters by describing their reactions to the iconic landmark of the Sydney Opera House. For Ellie the building is an ode to joy, to James it’s white curves resemble predatory teeth, like those a shark. Pei Xing admires the harmony of form while Catherine compares it to the drooping petals of a white rose. It is these evocative descriptions that give us insight into the characters state of mind. Five Bells reveals the lives of these four very different people who are passing through Circular Quay on a sunny, summer day and we follow them until night falls. Ellie and James, once teenage lovers are meeting for the first time in years and separately reminisce about their past together and their lives since. Pei Xing recalls her life under the communist regime in China as she travels to visit her torturer, while Catherine mourns her brother, tragically killed in a car accident. I found the pasts of these characters fascinating, particularly Pei Xing’s story, but their present is largely unremarkable.
Little actually happens in this novel but it is almost impossible not to be caught up in the secrets of these characters lives. The lack of plot and momentum can be off putting, though as Five Bells is just over 200 pages it’s done before you realise it’s not really going anywhere. This is not a novel you read for a compelling tale but to admire a beautiful turn of phrase and the occasional stunning insight.

Had Five Bells a more commercial story structure along with the gorgeous prose I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending it but I think its rather pretentious literary bent limits its appeal. It is a worthy read but perhaps not an entertaining one.

Available To Purchase

Australia: @ Boomerang Books I @Booktopia I @Readings

International: @ Amazon I @BookDepository

Alternate Covers

Title: In Darkness

Author: Nick Lake

Published: Bloomsbury  Feb 012

Synopsis: In darkness I count my blessings like Manman taught me. One: I am alive. Two: there is no two. In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake a boy is trapped beneath the rubble of a ruined hospital: thirsty, terrified and alone.
‘Shorty’ is a child of the slums, a teenage boy who has seen enough violence to last a lifetime, and who has been inexorably drawn into the world of the gangsters who rule Site Soleil: men who dole out money with one hand and death with the other. But Shorty has a secret: a flame of revenge that blazes inside him and a burning wish to find the twin sister he lost five years ago. And he is marked. Marked in a way that links him with Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Haitian rebel who two-hundred years ago led the slave revolt and faced down Napoleon to force the French out of Haiti. As he grows weaker, Shorty relives the journey that took him to the hospital, a bullet wound in his arm. In his visions and memories he hopes to find the strength to survive, and perhaps then Toussaint can find a way to be free . . .

Status: Read from February 18 to 19, 2012 — I own a copy

My Thoughts:

In Darkness is an ambitious and powerful novel of Haiti’s troubled past and present. Lake alternates the life story of fifteen year old Shorty, trapped under rubble after the 2010 earthquake, with the history of Touissaint L’Ouverture, a man who led the country in a revolution. Lake explores the darkness within, both characters whose lives have strong parallels despite the pair being separated by centuries.

I was immediately drawn in by the spectacularly moving opening of the story. Shorty, is buried under tons of rubble when the hospital collapses in an earthquake. In the pitch black, surrounded by the dead, desperately thirsty Shorty recalls the poverty, violence and deprivation of his childhood in the slums of Haiti. Delving into his memories is a painful and confronting experience, irrevocably altered by witnessing the brutal slaying of his father, and the loss of his twin sister, Shorty’s brief life has been unimaginably hard. In the encampment, which the author assures us is an accurate depiction of the environment, death is a constant presence and now facing his own mortality entombed by cement and darkness Shorty has the time to reflect on his circumstance and the choices he has made.
As Shorty drifts in darkness, his plea to the voodoo guides results in his essence being entertwined with that of Touissaint L’Ouverture, a creole salve who led a rebellion in the late 1700′s. I have to admit that I did not find this narrative as compelling as Shorty’s. It is a crucial element of the story but it lacks the immediacy of Shorty’s plight. The connections between Shorty and Touissaint slowly become more tangible with comparisons between the social, cultural, and political of Haiti in both the past and the present. While Shorty has become mired in the disadvantages of his life, Touissaint’s story shows how one can overcome, and it is his story that lends Shorty strength even as he is convinced he will die amongst the wreckage.

A powerful and moving story there is a disturbing amount of truth in this fiction. In Darkness is a startlingly original novel but it is not an easy read. It is an intense, brutally honest story that reveals a country and people caught in a vicious cycle of prejudice and poverty.

Available To Purchase

Australia: @BoomerangBooks I @Booktopia I @A&U

International: @ Amazon I @Book Depository

Title: A Soul Less Broken

Author: Helen Laibach

Published: June 2011

Synopsis: After being brutally attacked, Catherine Wilcox must discover her own inner strength and courage as she struggles to piece her life back together. She finds herself falling in love with the emergency room physician who treats her, but soon realizes the attack has left her so emotionally scarred that she must turn away the only man who truly loves her. And at a time when she feels her life is finally beginning to heal, Catherine must then face the devastation of learning that her dearest friend has terminal cancer. In A Soul Less Broken we follow Catherine as she discovers the depth of true friendship, the healing power of love, and the stamina of the human spirit. Read an excerpt.

Status: Read on February 11, 2012 — I own a copy {Courtesy the author}

My Thoughts:

I believe A Soul Less Broken would be classified as inspirational fiction – the protagonist, Catherine Wilcox, endures devastating tragedy leaving her broken, spiritually and physically, but is able to recover hope and purpose in her life.
The novel deliberately yanks at the heartstrings demanding sympathy for the characters, Catherine lost her mother at a young age, has little self esteem after years of being victimised by a philandering father, also now dead, and yet is studying law in a desire to do good in the world. When she is brutally beaten, raped and left for dead it would be no surprise if Catherine simply spiraled into depression and remained trapped by the horror but, with help from a caring doctor and psychologist, she fights her way through the pain, faces her attacker and becomes an inspiration to women who have suffered a similar experience. It’s a harrowing, if ultimately uplifting, story but just as Catherine triumphs, she is again rocked by the terminal diagnosis of her therapist, Maddie, who has become her best friend.
I admired the main characters for their strength in overcoming adversity and felt that the author created credible personalities. The friendship between Maddie and Catherine is well developed, Maddie has her own demons that she has worked to overcome only to be diagnosed with a deadly brain tumor. But for me the romantic attraction between Catherine and Alan is uneven even though their love story is promoted as a major plot line. The emotional connection is hampered by the fact Catherine and Alan are physically separated for the bulk of the novel. It felt in some ways, that Alan’s role as a love interest was written in after the bulk of the story had already been plotted.
While the plot is crowded with tragedy, Laibach is able to balance it well enough with a sense of hope. I like the message that the author shares about stopping violence against women and the importance of seeking justice. However, the plot is predictable with several heavy-handed coincidences affecting the credibility of the story. The writing in general isn’t bad but the dialogue is largely unnatural. Conversations are stilted and either too formal or too casual for the situation. Though largely free from errors,’gunna’ is overused, and is even found in the text of a letter.
Despite some flaws in execution, Laibach does achieve her stated goal of ‘creating a novel with the message of hope, self-discovery and empowerment’. A Soul Less Broken is a good first effort from this self published author and if you are in the mood for an emotional tear-jerker with an inspiring message of triumph over adversity, then you will likely enjoy this novel.

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About the Author

Helen Laibach lives in Southern California with her husband of twenty years and their youngest daughter. Along with being an avid reader and talented nature photographer, Helen enjoys writing contemporary women’s fiction. All her novels will have messages of hope, self-discovery, and empowerment. And while the characters will go through their fair share of loss, heartbreak, betrayal, and even danger, she promises that each book will have an ending that satisfies. Her debut novel, A Soul Less Broken is no exception.  

Website I Goodreads

Available to purchase in both print and electronic formats

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The Its Monday! What Are You Reading meme is hosted at Book Journey

 A chunkster that took longer to read than I was expecting, (because I wasn’t carried away by it like I hoped) and overdue notices on some library books distracted me from my schedule this week. February is too short LOL.

What I Read Last Week

Five Bells by Gail Jones

The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

The Brotherhood by YA Erskine

In Darkness by Nick Lake

Reviews Posted

(click the titles to comment on my reviews)

This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman ★★★★

The Short History of A Tall Jew by Dennis Danziger ★★★1/2

The Radleys by Matt Haig ★★★★

Sharp Turn by Marianne Delacourt ★★★1/2

Silver Tongued Devil by Jaye Wells ★★★

What I Am Reading Today

In the summer of 1963, the year of the release of Cleopatra, the most sensational movie ever made, the women of Kalyna Beach prepare for their annual end-of season party. Sonia Martyn and her four daughters are part of a group of first generation Ukrainian Canadians, newly minted middle-class families claiming their small part of the cottage-country dream. With their husbands away in the city all week, the women’s days are ruled by the predictable rhythms of children and chores, lightened by the “racy” books they trade amongst themselves and by their Friday afternoon gatherings for gin and gossip, heightened by their obsession with the deliciously scandalous love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  Their tightly bound world is straining with its own dramas and secrets. Sonia, a former fashion model, mourns the death of her mother and fights with her difficult eldest daughter. Elusive Nadia, the wife of a millionaire, longs for a life she cannot have. Sharp-tongued, sophisticated Sasha plays a dangerous game in both challenging and shoring-up the traditional Ukrainian community and its defining values. And for adolescent Laura, her sisters and their friends, the rifts and fissures that appear in the once impregnable “world of the mothers” will unleash a startling series of betrayals and discoveries. For this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence is exchanged for a new understanding of the possibilities open to them all.

What I Plan To Read This Week

{click the cover to view at Goodreads}

MISCONCEPTION is the story of suburban Atlanta stay-at-home mom Pace Kelly and what happens when an unplanned pregnancy three years after her husband’s vasectomy rocks her happy marriage. When her husband Jason turns up sterile, Pace tries to explain the unexplainable. Her patience wears thin while Jason struggles with his suspicions and her two young sons look at her as if she’s to blame for their problems. As rumors of trouble with their marriage begin to circulate through the neighborhood and Pace begins to feel the sting of isolation from people she thought were her friends, her once perfect world begins to crumble. To top it all off, her overbearing mother’s insistence on creating a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving during the biggest crisis of Pace’s life is making her crazy. Despite Pace’s insistence that she hasn’t cheated, Jason Kelly is left to wonder if his blueblood wife has finally grown tired of his humble background and their middle class lifestyle. When he finds Pace in a compromising position, he ignores the advice of his brother and the marriage therapist who have warned him about jumping to conclusions and makes arrangements to have Pace followed. But the truth he discovers is a heavier burden to carry than the innuendo that was eating him alive. Now the tables are turned and he’s left holding a smoking gun. An innocent wife. A desperate husband. A no-win situation. When the smoke clears, will their marriage survive?

When Paulina dies mid-dance, she leaves 12-year-old Zav and 7-year-old Sealie with their loving but unstable father, Hal. The grieving family decides to plant a tree in her memory – a magnolia which, growing along with the children, offers a special place where secrets are whispered and feelings can be confessed. But as the memory tree grows, Hal, bereft, and increasingly suspicious of the world, turns to his own brand of salvation to make sense of the voices that bewilder and torment him. Mrs Mac, housekeeper and second mother since Paulina’s death, cooks, cleans, loves and worries about her ‘family’. She is even more concerned when Hal brings a larger-than-life stranger to the house for a beer; but Pastor Moses B. Washbourne, founder of the Church of the Divine Conflagration, ex-sergeant of the US Army, soon becomes part of the family, with surprising and far-reaching consequences. As the seasons pass, Sealie blossoms into young woman, the apple of Hal’s eye while Zav, having spent his childhood quietly trying to win his father’s lost attention, is conscripted for duty in Vietnam. And all the while, the voices continue to murmur poisonous words to Hal who knows he must keep them hidden . . . until he is persuaded into the most tragic of acts.

A compelling new series about Dr Dody McCleland, the first female autopsy surgeon.  A woman. A doctor. A beastly science.  At the turn of the twentieth century, London’s political climate is in turmoil, as women fight for the right to vote. Dody McCleland has her own battles to fight. As England’s first female autopsy surgeon, she must prove herself as she also proves that murder treats everyone equally…  After a heated women’s rights rally turns violent, an innocent suffragette is found murdered. When she examines the body, Dody is shocked to realise that the victim was a friend of her sister – fuelling her determination to uncover the cause of the protester’s suspicious death.  For Dody, gathering clues from a body is often easier than handling the living – especially Chief Detective Inspector Matthew Pike. Pike is looking to get to the bottom of this case but has a hard time trusting anyone – including Dody. Determined to earn Pike’s trust and to find the killer, Dody will have to sort through real and imagined secrets. But if she’s not careful, she may end up on her own examination table.

No good deed goes unpunished.  A Kabbalah magician, Aaron Walker has devoted the last hundred years of his life to his Foundation, a charity that helps widows, orphans, and the stranger in the land. It doesn’t get much stranger than the Lost: male witches who don’t have parents to train them in the arts. Now, corporate wizards are trying to kill him, and he has no idea why.  With a handful of former students, he hops from one hidden enclave of cultural magic to another, hoping to survive long enough to contact the witches of New Salem. But the assassins don’t scare Aaron as much as the price the witch Rose demands for her aid–to father a child. To keep his magic and save the world, he must remain a virgin. Merodak, the demon, offers a way out but he’s a pathological liar with a twisted sense of humor.

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Title: Silver-Tongued Devil {Sabina Kane #4}

Author: Jaye Wells

Published: Orbit Jan 2012

Synopsis: Now that the threat of war has passed, Sabina Kane is ready to focus on the future. Her relationship with Adam Lazarus is getting stronger and she’s helping her sister, Maisie, overcome the trauma of her captivity in New Orleans. Even Giguhl is managing to stay out of trouble thanks to the arrival of Pussy Willow and his new roller derby team. But as much as Sabina wants to feel hopeful about the future, part of her doesn’t trust that peace is possible.  Her suspicions are confirmed when a string of sadistic murders threaten to stall treaty negotiations between the mages and the vampires. Sabina pitches in to find the killer, but her investigation soon leads her down dark paths that have her questioning everyone she thought she could trust. And the closer she gets to the killer, the more Sabina begins to suspect this is one foe she may not be able to kill. Read an excerpt

Status: Read from February 10 to 11, 2012 — I own a copy {Courtesy Orbit/Netgalley}

My Thoughts:

It’s awkward to review Silver Tongued Devil, the fourth book in the series without at least briefly referencing the events in the previous titles so if you haven’t yet read them, and plan to, you might want to avoid this review…

With her grandmother dead, Cain thwarted, Maisie rescued and Sabina settling into the New York mage community with Adam you could be forgiven for expecting that this fourth installment would be lacking the action and urgency of the first three books. In some ways that is accurate, Silver Tongued Devil is more about internal conflict than raging battles. Sabina is struggling to reconcile her vampire and mage halves, and is uneasy about suppressing her natural instincts. She hopes the opportunity to investigate the brutal murders happening in the city, will satisfy her but instead she is distracted at having to work with both Slade and Adam, worried that Adam will figure out exactly what happened in New Orleans. With the added concern of the approaching Treaty signing, Sabina doesn’t realise how badly her twin is suffering after the events in The Green-Eyed Demon and seems unable to reach out to her friends. With all this emotional angst, I didn’t enjoy this installment quite as much as the first three. It’s not only Sabina and Adam not getting along, Giguhl is feeling ignored and despite filling his time with roller derby and a budding relationship with a transgender fairy, his spark seems to be missing. Georgia and Mac’s also make an appearance but their relationship is dissolving under the pressure of werewolf law so it’s heartbreak all round. It is good to see emotional growth from the characters but I didn’t think  it was balanced well within the plot. It’s not until about three quarters into the story that the action begins, though it has quite a kick. In a shocking finale, Sabina discovers she isn’t as nearly as free from her past as she hoped and risks losing everything.

Silver-Tongued Devil is not the best example of this series but skipping over it would definitely leave a hole in the storyline, this isn’t a series that can be picked up out of order. The conclusion certainly saved the book for me and left me eager to read the next, Blue-Blooded Vamp, due in June 2012, which will conclude the series.

Available To Purchase

@ Amazon I @BookDepository

Previous books in the Sabina Kane Series (covers linked to my reviews)

As a free wordpress blog the GFC (Google Friend Connect) widget has never been an option for me and I admit that initially I was envious of the visual popularity status the sidebar feature bestowed. It didn’t take me long though to realise that GFC numbers mostly had more to do do with giveaway requirements than actual admiration for the blog and to be honest I was glad to be freed from the tyranny of the gadget. That’s not to say I didn’t want followers though, and so I succumbed to the lure of ‘follow me’ memes and  contests in those first few months and I established several alternative ways for visitors to follow me through Facebook, Twitter, Feedburner, networked blogs etc..

My aim though, was to hopefully find people within those memes and giveaways who might be interested enough in my blog to visit independently.  I found perhaps a handful or two but mostly I never heard from most participants between one meme or giveaway post and the next and while I would diligently visit and comment (meaningfully) on around 50 blogs each week the return on those visits was negligible in comparison.  It took me a while but I realised I was targeting the wrong audience, the memes I took part in were dominated by YA bloggers so it was understandable they weren’t interested in my blog.  Eventually I found a meme  that had participants with similar reading tastes to mine and since then, the blog has become interactive.

It’s not just a result of the meme though,  I do make an effort to cultivate relationships. I reply to comments made here on the blog and I visit the blogs of the people who leave a comment for me. I visit a random assortment of blogs regularly with the express  intention of leaving comments and my personal policy is if I read a post, I comment, or in some other acknowledge that I was there (the WordPress Like Button comes in handy here).

*If you visit but don’t comment or click that Like button I have no idea you were here and can’t repay the visit *

While follower numbers are nice they only indicate someone visited your blog once,  what I value most are the people who visit regularly, especially those who let me know they stopped by. During BBAW last year I posted some suggestions for making interaction easier and I have been taking my own advice. As bloggers panic at the prospect of losing the GFC,  I am actually thankful it is disappearing because I think the widget discourages ongoing interaction between bloggers. I admit that I am sometimes still disheartened by the ratio of page views to comments (about 1 to 100),  though that makes the comments I do receive even sweeter.

Still, I’m sort of at a loss on how to encourage more comments. The Stuff on Sunday posts aim to promote discussion and interaction and I have been considering adding explicit questions to my reviews in the hopes it might prompt replies.  I already have all the Share This buttons and the WordPress Like Button so readers can easily acknowledge they read a post even if they had nothing in particular to say.

While I wrote this post early in the week (prompted by Sean’s comment on last Sundays post), yesterday Parajunkee’s Book Blogging 101 post popped up in my RSS Reader and it seems she is discussing the same topic. A quick read of her post and comments suggests one of the main barriers to comments is Captcha (or similar) which I have to agree with. As a WordPress blog its not an issue for me but posting on Google Blogs is often a nightmare. Most of the time it wont let me use my OpenId or WordPress ID to post so I have to post using my blogger alias, sometimes the comment errors out and is lost to the ether, other times it just refuses to let me post altogether or its a three step process of reloads to comment so that it takes forever. Aside from that it seems most bloggers feel they do not receive enough comments,  but what I find interesting about that, is that in the same breath they write they are too busy to comment themselves.  Anyway, while Parajunkee is asking how you encourage people to comment on your posts, my question is a little different.

I want to know what stops you from leaving a comment on, or acknowledging a post?  Think about it and let me know!

The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop is an event taking place from Saturday February 18th until (and including) Wednesday February 22nd, hosted by Judith @ Leeswammes Blog.

You might notice (if you poke around) that this year I am making a big effort to read more books by Australian authors by taking part in the Australian Women Writers Challenge and the Aussie Author Challenge. So for this literary hop I am offering the winner a choice from a range of novels published by Australian authors.

Click on the title to view the book at Goodreads, click on the image to view the book at The Book Depository.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

CloudStreet by Tim Winton

Addition by Toni Jordan

Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland

Five Bells by Gail Jones

The Good Parents by Joan London

The Thorn Birds by Colleen Mc Cullough

Entry details

Open worldwide*

(*you MUST qualify for the Bookdepository free shipping – see if your country is listed here)

Winner will be drawn via random.org

You must follow Book’d Out in at least one of the ways below (links at right)

WordPress subscription, Email subscription, RSS, Twitter, Facebook,  Goodreads

TO ENTER CLICK HERE

I’d love it if you took a few minutes and poked around the blog, maybe even leave a comment!

Visit the other blog hop participants