New Urban Fantasy and Epic Fantasy Novels – Short Reviews

If anyone wonders why I grow impatient with badly told paranormal and urban fantasy novellas and novels that substitute sex for story, well here we go – 3 excellent examples of how good it can be when well done.  I do enjoy well done Urban Fantasy books out there with heroines can take care of themselves.   Here are some short reviews of two urban fantasies and one epic fantasy novel by a new writer.

• Title: Spider’s Bite
  
• Author:  Jennifer Estep
• Type:  Urban Fantasy
• Genre: Assassin and incorruptible cop team up uncover vicious magical killer and end up fighting a mutual attraction
• Sub-genre:  Female assassin is setup by client to take the fall for killing a whistle blower, she must solve the mystery to live
• My Grade: B-  (3.8*)
• Rating:  PG-13 to NC-17
• Length and price: Full length novel; about 110,000+ words for $7.99
• Where Available:  Available where books are sold; Amazon 4-for-3 special
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased book from online bookseller

Book Review: What a Dragon Should Know by G. A. Aiken

• Title: What a Dragon Should Know
• Author: G. A. Aiken/Shelly Laurenston
• Type: Epic fantasy romance
• Genre: alternate world/dragon shifter
• Sub-genre: conniving liars meet their match
• My Grade: A- (4.5*)
• Rating: NC-17
• Where Available: Everywhere books are sold

G. A. Aiken is Shelly Laurenston’s alter ego for her dragon fantasy series.  In the first two books, Dragon Actually and About a Dragon, the author builds a world where various species of dragon exist side-by-side with humans, who are often seen by the dragons as a food source.  The dragons rarely trouble themselves with short lived humans, but somehow the off-spring of  Queen Riannon of the Southland fire dragons, keep finding human mates, much to their father Bercelek’s annoyance!   She’s added an interim story of the parents of this mob – Queen Riannon and Bercelek contained within Dragon Actually, and Everlasting Bad Boys had a great novella, Can’t Get Enough, about Ailean the Wicked and Shalin the Innocent, the grandparents of the dragons in the Dragon Kin series, written as Shelly Laurenston.  I love Laurenston’s humor and strong female leads and the males who love them for being exactly what they are, tough as nails schemers and fighters.  What a Dragon Should Know is book 3 in her Dragon Kin series and it’s far more of an epic fantasy than a romance.  Regardless, it’s another complex, laugh out loud story of wildly eccentric dragons and the equally eccentric mates they choose.