Supernatural It Ain't

 I don't know what possessed me to pick up this one... Oh, wait... I remember what it was... It was billed as something, something Supernatural, only if Sam and Dean were "together". I didn't care about the "together" part; I was just in the mood for something to scratch that Supernatural itch without having to rewatch the episodes. In short, I wanted something familiar yet new.

Morgan Brice's Witchbane starts off strong enough with brothers Seth and Jesse Tanner setting off to explore Hellgate, an infamous haunted tunnel in their hometown. Their intention is to debunk the myth surrounding the site, but they soon get more than they bargained for, and younger brother Jesse is brutally butchered by a supernatural entity. Well, at least we know we're not going to have a Wincest situation here.

There's a time jump of two years, during with Seth has become a "hunter," tracking down and dispatching supernatural beings, and we also learn that he's not the only one. There's a whole network of hunters out there, and it seems like every pairing ends up being a gay couple working together. Seth is the only lone wolf -- so we know where this is heading. Seth had figured out who killed his brother, kinda sort of. Seems many many moons ago, some witch was killed, and every year, one of the descendants, the first born of whatever generation, of the original executioners has to be sacrificed by one of the immortal members of the coven in order to maintain their immortality. We also find that the Tanner family was a party to the original executioners and Seth, being the oldest, had been the intended target. So now Seth is out to avenge his brother's death and prevent any of the other descendants from being sacrificed. Enter Jackson "Sonny" Evan Malone, the hot, humpy bartender who Seth ends up going home with, not realizing this is the man he's supposed to be protecting. And this is where the book begins to fall apart.

I knew going in that this was an urban fantasy/paranormal romance/thriller, so I knew there was going to be some sex, and since it was a gay paranormal romance, that the sex was going to be man on man. That didn't bother me. What bothered me was that a little more than half the book is filled with sex and it feels like the urban fantasy/thriller part was thrown in as filler between the sex scenes. Take away the sex scenes and you're left with a very short novella. Additionally, the story takes place over the span of a few days, and we're expected to believe that they've fallen so madly and deeply in love with each other that they can't picture their lives without each other. Look... this is a series, seven books so far. Approach it a little more realistically. Let the romance build over the course of the series. And gay men are not walking hormones; they don't get boners every time a hot guy sneezes, or coughs, or farts, but that certainly seems to be the case here. And that's a shame, really. I had high hopes going into this book and was hoping I'd find something I could lose myself in to satisfy that itch for the monster ass-kicking, brotherly camaraderie of Sam and Dean without resorting to watching the series over again because I gladly would have continued with these books, but I can very easily imagine I'll be getting more of the same, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass. And I recommend you do the same. Final rating: 2/5 stars

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

I finished this one a while ago, but I needed to put some distance between me and the book because I wasn't sure how I felt about it. And in truth, I still don't know how I feel.

When I started reading The Red Trilogy by Paul Kane, I was in the mood for a traditional werewolf novel, even better if it was a series (or in this case, a trilogy), and that's not what I got.

You might think when you start reading this book that you're going to get a reimaging of the old children's tale of Little Red Riding Hood, and you'd be right--if the Big, Bad Wolf was a werewolf. The problem is, the first "book" in this trilogy is short. Very short. To the point where it feels more like a novella or novelette.

It's in the second "book" where the confusion starts. We're introduced to Rachel Daniels, an aspiring actress who's working as a homecare aide until her big break. She has an encounter with the beast and she gets eaten. But then we see her running around, alive, and being wooed by this guy who's actually a hunter on the trail of the beast. What we find out during the course of the book, and this happens early enough into the book that I don't consider it a spoiler, is this "werewolf" can take the form of anyone it has eaten, and the only way to can see the beast's true nature is by looking at its reflection in a mirror. Now we've seen the Rachel beast kill someone, but at the same time, we've seen Rachel in the company of someone else. So did Rachel survive the werewolf attack? You wouldn't think so since the beast is able to assume her form. But if the beast had eaten her, how can she be up and running around? It's all explained at the end of Book 2, but the explanation is so convoluted it will leave your head spinning.

In Book 3, we jump to the future and the werewolf apocalypse.

This book took me longer than usual to read, and to be honest, once I realized this wasn't the traditional werewolf novel(s) I was looking for, I almost put it aside. More than once.

The question you probably want an answer to is, Is it a bad book? And the answer is---Yes. And no. Yes, in the fact that I feel the reader is misled into thinking they're getting something other than a classic werewolf tale. And even though the book's description builds it up as a reworking of Little Red Riding Hood, I feel even that falls by the wayside after Book 1. The "No" part of that answer is only speculation on my part because I have to wonder if I would have enjoyed it more had I not gone in with any preconceived notions of what I was expecting.

Other than my overall disappointment with the story, I did feel there were some pacing issues where the story dragged a bit, losing any forward momentum that it had, and I don't feel there was enough character development, at least for me, because I didn't find myself invested in any of them. As a result, I wasn't getting caught up in their story and didn't care if any of them survived to the end. But I don't know how much of this is actual and how much my feelings for the book were influenced by my overall disappointment in the book.Would I recommend it? Based on my experience with it, no, I wouldn't, but again, I don't know how much is my disappointment in not getting what I wanted vs the actual quality of the book. So the only thing I can say is read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions, which you should do with any book, good or bad review. Final rating? 2 stars out of 5.