Spymaster update and More about Lust Bites

The Update
THE SPYMASTER'S LADY is so enchanting and exciting, I can no longer read it before bed, because as soon as I turn the light out I just think about it excitedly, replaying all the delicious scenes in my head when I should be sleeping. Marveling, replaying, churning.

I am losing serious sleep, Ms. Joanna Bourne, and it is ALL YOUR FAULT! You have made your book too enthralling.

I am quite new to historicals. Is it possible they are all this good? This is such a good life to have one excellent book to read after another. I feel so lucky.

More about Lust Bites
I never considered myself an anthology reader, but I have certainly gotten a ton of pleasure out of this one. Maybe I have been transformed into an anthology reader now. We’ll see! Maybe I’ll wake up soon with glowing red eyes, craving another anthology, running madly through the streets to Barnes and Noble, frightening the clerks with my strangely elongated reading glasses.

I finished it a bit ago, but I never got to talk about the Kristina Lloyd story. Tumperkin, who generously gave me this book as a prize, enjoyed the exquisite writing in this story, and I’d have to agree. Both this and the Portia Da Costa story are startlingly well written.

Ah, a bloggerly pleasure
Tumperkin excerpted one of her favorite passages, and it was really fun coming back across that passage in context. That happened with a passage that lisabea excerpted from Demon Night, too. It is a unique pleasure to revisit passages that my online friends have pointed out.

Anyway...
What I found remarkable in this story was the collision of worlds, or more, of thought processes. You have Arctic trekker Esther, who is an intelligent, likeable and highly reasonable heroine trekking along with her wholesome, sophisticated, outdoorsy Arctic group.

Esther’s scenes alternate with scenes featuring these debauched and sex-crazed vampires, two men and a woman, and their equally crazed vampire cat, cavorting in their freaky arctic outpost, making weird decisions about things. Their mad ways are exactly what you’d expect from isolated vampires in the arctic tundra. Wonderfully written. Delightfully dirty!

And you have the hero, vampire Billy, their leader sort of, struggling to raise up out of his chaotic mad ways and do the right thing for once, regarding Esther, who he was in love with centuries ago. It’s absolutely wonderful. This story is crazy and wonderful.

So you have a sexy vampire roommate. Now what?

Great Moments from last night's reading
Book: Lust Bites
Author: Da Costa/Lloyd/Madden
Spoiler level: medium

Well, my self discipline just isn’t all that great apparently. I have torn into one of the books I was specifically saving for our vacation to Seattle, and now I am half through it. It’s turned into a bit of a binge, actually, but the good thing about a reading binge is that it doesn’t have negative consequences.

Unless you count my pure mind being addled by the deliciously smutty stuff in these wonderful stories, won by me from the generous “tash v. slap” Tumperkin. Oh my god!

Anyway, I am reading these in reverse order, saving the reportedly best, the Kristina Lloyd story, for last. So I haven’t read that, but goddman if I haven’t enjoyed these other two. Especially the one I’m in the middle of now, the Portia Da Costa story, Buddies Don't Bite.

Her characters here are finely drawn, especially Zachary, who is secretly a vampire and his roommate Teresa can never know! But they are really into each other!

The learn sharp line of his cheekbones and his jaw conferred on him a louche romantic glamour that reminded her of those sexy silent movie stars who dressed as sheikhs and wore eyeliner. Couple that with the kind of dark curly hair…that suggested a wild Byronic decadence on him, and the most hypnotic blue eyes, the color of a rare antique perfume bottle.

Thanks, Portia - I totally know that color! We used to find little bottles that color in Pewaukee Lake. I love louche romantic glamour, too. Louche means disreputable, but you don’t need to know that. This story is also subtly humorous. Like, Teresa thinks Zack has food allergies, and photosensitivity, and he drinks this iron fortification drink. And why is she always thinking about his teeth? she wonders. You get the sense Da Costa is having fun writing this.

And there are vivid little erotic touches. Like, they go to bed together, but she still doesn’t know he’s a vampire--she mustn't see his crimson eyes of arousal, so he blindfolds her and here’s this next:

Zack began to unfasten her pyjama top. He slipped each button from its hole, but didn’t open the panels, moving all the way down to the hem with her body still covered. Then, only then, did he pluck apart the leaves and expose her.

I love how Da Costa takes care to describe this so precisely and exactly. It's odd, not like this big lusty move, but thoughtful and effective. I would definitely go for a full Da Costa novel.