Eine Sammlung von vier Kurzgeschichten:

Patricia Briggs: Alpha und Omega
Da mir die Mercy Thompson Reihe der Autorin gut gefallen hat, habe ich mir das Buch wegen dieser Geschichte gekauft. Mercy selbst kommt zwar nicht vor, aber die Handlung spielt in der selben Welt, eine Hauptperson ist Charles Cornick.
"The werewolf Anna finds a new sense of self when the son of the werewolf king comes to town to quell unrest in the Chicago pack - and inspires a power in Anna that she's never felt before."
Gute Geschichte, schon alleine deshalb hat sich der Kauf gelohnt.

Zwei der übrigen Geschichten, Eileen Wilks: Inhuman und Karen Chance: Buying Trouble haben mir ebenfalls gut gefallen. Die letzte Story, Sunny: Mona Lisa Betwining, war etwas sehr Sex-lastig und hatte ansonsten weniger zu bieten.

Ging zusammen mit "Iron Kissed" von Patricia Briggs als Ring auf die Reise, ist inzwischen alleine unterwegs.

Teilnehmer:
1. rotewoelfin
2. Sao-Diego12548
3. ekaterin4luv
4. delfinetti
5. mikani (Östereich; hätte aber auch eine Adresse in Deutschland)
6. KillerPueppi
7. Schneefee
8. LittleF
9. ?

Picked out of the Packstation on Saturday :)

Finished the book today :)

I also liked the story about Charles and Anna very much - the whole pack and wolve stories are fascinating - after finishing this storie I pre-ordered the two books of Briggs that will come in autumn and next spring. The first one will be with Anna and Charles and the second one with Mercy!

The three other stories - ok to read, but none of them really forced me looking for other books of the authors.

Will send it to Berlin tomorrow or Tuesday :)

The books arrived well. I had to start reading them right away - which made me forget to journal them first...

The first story, I liked a lot. It was nice to get more insight into this world and into persons, that you already met in the Mercy-Novels.

What I didn't really like about the book generally is that it is more of a "teaser" collection than a book of (relatively) short-stories. What I missed a bit in all stories was a certain kind of wholeness. The stories seem to be either the begin or the middle of other, bigger stories. Sometimes I had the feeling as if they took a part of a novel and tried to fit it into the form of a short story, with the result of missing parts or really fast (and therefore really unrealistic) developments (like falling endlessly in love with, say, a fae in, like, a day...). It just didn't fit very well together.

I didn't notice this so much in Patricia Briggs story, which is, why I liked it the best. However, this is probably because I already read three books of "her world", knew some of the action and some of the characters...
But I'm very happy to have read this part of the story... :)

The one story I really, really liked the least was the last. I think it's very weird, outstandlingly uncoherent and, well I dont know just HOW to discribe. The sex (whith whomever...) was clearly in the center of everything shoving the story itself in the backround.
This could be a new genre: PMFMC: Pop me, fair mystic creature... :D


I'll ask for the next adress and the books'll be on their way...

Unfair! This is a teaser book! 2 out of 4 stories are teasers for "real" books.
Well, I will continue this trend and give you the link to the teaser for Cry Wolf, or inoficially what happens next with Charles and Anna:
http://www.hurog.com/books/cryWolfChapter.shtml

Alpha and Omega was really a good read and I'm looking forward to Cry Wolf.

The book arrived today safe and sound.

Edit 05.11.2009
I read the "Alpha and Omega" story today in one go. Now I finaly know the details how Charles and Anna met. The rough outline was could be picked up in the books but not in detail how... I mighht want to read the first book again now, to put that into perspective. Anyway the story is nice but TOO short ;-) I´ll see what the others are about, and report back :-)

Edit 06.11.2009:
I read "Buying trouble" and quite liked the story and the charakters. The story has a nice kind of humor that I like. I mean who would come up with the first argument that beeing a were-dragon is ... well not fun ... after just having found out he / she is one his-/herself the hard way "I dont even eat meat!" feeling sorry for the horse accidentally incinerated at first change ;-)

I read the "Mona Lisa Betwining" too but there didn´t seem much of a plot to connect the sex... that makes the storry pritty dull.

Edit 08.11.2009:
I just finished the second story witch I have read last (because it is the longest). "Inhuman" by Eileen Wilks is a fascinating story. The "normal" world is shaken because some months ago the "power winds" blew and the level in magic has dramatically risen (and is still rising). Tecnology is by and by failing, more and more people are demonstrating magic powers of some sort. Some who had them to some littel extend bevor the power winds blew are now POWERFUL and lots of people who never had abilities now have to cope with them... I just love THAT backdrop story!
Kai has telepatic abilities - she has figured that Nathan, a cop and acquaintance of hers - can´t be human....

Just asked mikani for her adress.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

The book is on it´s was to the next person on the ringlist. Thank you very much for this suspencefull ring!

Das Buch ist am Wochenende angekommen und reist demnächst nach Österreich weiter.

Received the book from quak on the weekend, and already started reading.

Update 21.12.2009:
I really liked the "Alpha and Omega" story (which in truth was the main reason I subscribed for the book *g*). Finally the details of how Charles and Anna met.

I also found "Inhuman" and "Buying trouble" quite nice. Interesting characters and world settings.

The one story I didn't like was "Mona Lisa Betwining" - well actually there really wasn't much of a story, just people having sex all the time.

Update 28.12.2009:
book is now on it's way to KillerPueppi

Book hgas arrived well, hope I can start reading soon (some other books have priority ;) )

got it yesterday, and as killerpueppi enthused sooo much over the last story, I immediately started reading it when I got home (right after taking the illegal shower past 22:00).
You were absolutely right, pueppi ;-) I can absolutely agree to delfinnetti, too.

well... it's not that the other 3 stories aren't worth reading, but actually I'd also lived a happy Fantasy-reader's-life without them. I'll definitely not look after more books by these authors.
But I'm glad I could read the prologue of Anna and Charles' story before really starting with the books.

I've already sent LittleF a Mail, but since she's an incomparably faster reader than I am we agreed I'll keep "On the Prowl" until I've also finished "Cry Wolf", so the waiting-time hopefully wouldn't be too long for her between the books.

Just got it from the mail box :-)
I've been away for some days but the book (I mean the books) were waiting patiently.

Thanks for sending!

Edit 2010-08-27:
I got the book on nearly the same day like "Cry Wolf" and so I decided to read the stories in an other order than given in the book:
I started with "Inhuman" by Eileen Wilks. This has been a story where I think I would like to read more by this author. I will have a look.
Next came "Buying Trouble" from Karen Chance. This was a bit confusing for me and didn't stay in my head very long.
Third for me was "Mona Lisa Betwining" from Sunny. This story was the one in the book I liked least but that is a personal opinion.
And then the story I had been looking for most: "Alpha and Omega" by our loved Patricia! After having read the first three Mercy books I was most curios about Anna which had been mentioned only in like half a sentence. I enjoyed learning about a new set of characters in Pats' universe! At the end of this really short story I had a kind of definition of an Omega werewolf and had to read more and started on Cry Wolf :-)