A Lick of Frost

The State of the Writer: 10/2/22

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<–The State of the Writer: 9/18/22         The State of the Writer: 10/16/22–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 1

Project: Story/Series
Working Title: The High Archon (The Truth Seeker Chronicles)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 11,282
Status: Reorganizing & Worldbuilding
Progress: Updating background information on Scrivener

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to work on next.  I’ve finished the pages for the major characters, and I made one for all the pronouns in the Rava language (I had a spreadsheet already of course).  I’ve been trying to work on better organizing the Pinterest boards since things seem out of sorts, and I’m also updating the name pronunciation guide and term glossary on Scrivener.

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A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton (Merry Gentry #6) (DNF)

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CW: Mention of SA with no details

Title: A Lick of Frost
Series: Merry Gentry
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Date Added: June 3, 2014
Date Started: November 1, 2018
Date DNF: November 1, 2018
Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance

Cover of A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton (Merry Gentry)Pages: 342
Publication Date: October 23, 2017
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Media: Paperback (Library)

I am Meredith Gentry, princess and heir apparent to the throne in the realm of faerie, onetime private investigator in the mortal world. To be crowned queen, I must first continue the royal bloodline and give birth to an heir of my own. If I fail, my aunt, Queen Andais, will be free to do what she most desires: install her twisted son, Cel, as monarch . . . and kill me.

My royal guards surround me, and my best loved-my Darkness and my Killing Frost-are always beside me, sworn to protect and make love to me. But still the threat grows greater. For despite all my carnal efforts, I remain childless, while the machinations of my sinister, sadistic Queen and her confederates remain tireless. So my bodyguards and I have slipped back into Los Angeles, hoping to outrun the gathering shadows of court intrigue. But even exile isn’t enough to escape the grasp of those with dark designs.

Now King Taranis, powerful and vainglorious ruler of faerie’s Seelie Court, has leveled accusations against my noble guards of a heinous crime-and has gone so far as to ask the mortal authorities to prosecute. If he succeeds, my men face extradition to faerie and the hideous penalties that await them there. But I know that Taranis’s charges are baseless, and I sense that his true target is me. He tried to kill me when I was a child. Now I fear his intentions are far more terrifying. 

I decided to give Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series another try, considering I’d ready well over ten of her Anita Blake books before I noped out due to nearly all of the plot being replaced by porn.  MG seemed to go down that slippery slope much quicker than Anita Blake did, as I believe there’s a scene in one of the earlier books where Merry and company are running from a monster or something and they stop to fuck in a hallway *facepalm*.  I’d barely finished the prior book in Anita Blake, Mistral’s Kiss, which I gave one star, and looking back at my Goodreads’ ratings now even the one before that, A Stroke of Midnight, only received two, so I wasn’t going into this with any high expectations.

But his hair was uniquely his own, silver, like metal beaten into hair.

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The State of the Reader: 12/5/18

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<–The State of the Reader: 10/24/18          The State of the Reader: 12/19/18–>

A weekly post updated every other Wednesday detailing my current reading projects and what new titles I’ve added to my to-read list.  Title links go to Goodreads, and if you have an account there feel free to friend me!  I’d love to see what you’re reading and/or planning to read.

Books Purchased: 9

Books DNF: 2

  • A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton (Meredith Gentry) – Somehow or another LKH made silver hair boring.  I didn’t think that was possible, but she did it.  “But his hair was uniquely his own, silver, like metal beaten into hair.”  Are you…fucking…kidding me?  I didn’t even finish the first chapter and I took the rest of her books of my TBR list.  I love her earlier work, but you can tell she now only cares about collecting a check.
  • The Stillness of the Sky by Starla Huchton (Flipped Fairy Tales) – Fuck abusive parents and fuck kindness when you’re being abused.  I know I have a huge issue with blaming the victim in stories like this.  I want to shake them and tell them to not put up with it, even though I know intellectually that that’s not fair.  It’s not the victim’s fault their abusers are trash.  I’m much more cognizant of it in real life, but in stories I hate a particular type of naivete in protagonists.  I think I hate when naivete is unrealistic even for fairy tales.  The MC is actually shocked her drunken, abusive father is willing to sell her to a whorehouse in order to pay his debts and continue to get his fix.  It just bugged me that she wouldn’t expect this from a man who’s done nothing but beat and belittle her since her mother left.  This is a Jack and the Beanstalk retelling, which isn’t one of my favorite stories in the first place, and I’m not invested enough in the character.  The ironic thing is this story is what got me interested in the Flipped Fairy Tale series in the first place.  I added it then realized it was the “second” in the compendium so I read Shadows on Snow first,which was okay.  It’s not like they’re in any order; I think it’s just the order Huchton wrote them.

Books Finished: 5

Title: Alex + Ada: The Complete Collection
Series Title: Alex + Ada
Author: Jonathan Luna
Artist: Sarah Vaugn
Date Added: October 28, 2016
Date Started: June 17, 2018
Date Finished: October 28, 2018
Reading Duration: 133 days

Alex + AdaIt didn’t take me this long to read this entire collection; I just split it up to pad my reading total.  The Complete Collection is made up of three books, but I read the one pictured above.  People rated the second and third higher than the first, and I’m not really sure why.  It’s an excellent series, and even though it doesn’t do anything new, it refines many previously touched on points in fiction involving AI sentience.

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