Merry Christmas Succubus!

An early Christmas present I will be buying for myself: Succubus On Top by Richelle Mead (release date-December 18th). Mead wrote one of my top five favorite reads of 2007: Succubus Blues. The 'blues' in the title refers to the central torment of the main character, Georgina: because she's a succubus, she'll suck out the life energy of any guy she's with. So she can't be with guys she likes. Well, not without destroying them, and who wants to do that?

One thing Mead does really well is to draw a complex character with an interesting moral makeup. That is to say, Georgina is sort of an ethical bad girl, which I loved. I mean, she'll have sex with her sleezy boss because she doesn't care about sucking his life energy, but she steers clear of the men she desperately desires, and in general, tries to be a not-too-evil succubus. Not easy!! And there is her backstory, full of self sacrifice. But she never feels all sorry for herself. The title is really wrong in this sense.

I also loved that Georgina works at a bookstore and is an avid reader and a fangirl of author Seth Morgenstern (I went with Jim Butcher there) and loves him for his mind, sort of (oh! what will become of their budding romance?) but the thing is, it made her feel like somebody I'd know and like. It made her feel like the kind of people I already know and like. In fact, of all the characters in all the books I've read recently, she's the one I'd most want to be friends with.

I think Mead made a very tricky juggling act look deceptively easy here, especially vis a vis what the men around her make of her mysterious ways. The dialogue rocks, too. I could go on. But I think I'm going to go preorder Succubus on Top.