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Showing posts with label Adonis Devereux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adonis Devereux. Show all posts

Thursday, 7 February 2019

Five authors (alive or dead) that I would like to meet - the #evernighties




Five authors (alive or dead) that I would like to meet.

First of all I want to meet (again) my dear friend LeaBronsen. She came visiting last year with her lovely family and I can’t wait to see them all again. It happens from time to time that you meet people online by chance, and it turns unexpectedly into real friendship. When I started talking with Lea (we had two books releasing on the same date, and were swapping blog spots, and one thing led to another) we discovered we had an absurd number of things in common. It became downright ridiculous, like we both had ducks *of the same rare breed*. Don’t tell me that’s normal. Some things are destined to be.

Second, I’d love to meet my other partner in crime KaterinaRoss, whose twisty, kinky magical world (see my post about the Sons of Gomorrah) I adore. She is also a fellow artist, and we have a Facebook Group together, the Ross and Wyvern Notorious Book Club. I don’t think I would have ventured into making an author/artist Facebook group on my own, but doing this with a friend turns out to be a lot of fun! We are both absorbed by increasingly weird writing projects, and I hope that if it comes to the worst, they lock us up in the same psych ward, so we can keep entertaining each other with our bizarre stories.

Third, I’d love to meet Adonis Devereux. This is actually two people, so perhaps it is cheating. They were pretty much the first people I met when I joined Evernight Publishing. We enjoyed each other books. And one thing and another, it sparked an online friendship that is still strong. They inhabit a wonderfully complex imaginary world, part of which can be explored in their Gilalion books. It is wonderful to talk stories with them, but it takes so long to type all our ramblings out, that it would be nice to just have a cup of tea together (or twwo or six) and talk them through until we are hoarse.

The other two authors I mention I have never talked to.
One is Terry Pratchett, and sadly he’s gone. There cannot be many authors with such a wickedly sharp sense of humour, such a wonderful talent for world-building, characterization and all-round story-telling. Although it’s easy for the snobs to dismiss his books as mere childish fantasy tales, they are in fact tremendously “grown up” books, full of wisdom and knowledge, craftily worked into an alternate universe of dazzling complexity. I would think the man behind these stories must have been pretty exceptional, and I wish I had had a chance to know him.

And finally I might like to meet Bill Bryson, whose travel books I have loved for many years. A well travelled person is always fun to talk with, and Bryson has a fine sense of humour, which is much needed these days.

There so many authors that I love. Antonia S. Byatt is my favourite of all times, but she seems rather daunting and rigid, as a person. Tolkien of course, but apparently he mumbled a lot and it was really difficult to understand a work he said, even for native English-speakers. It might be a tad awkward. O’Brian, perhaps? But he was such a fiercely private person, and so averse to being interviewed, that I fear I might get on his wrong side as soon as I say Good Morning. Some authors are best known through their books only, perhaps.

Friday, 4 August 2017

Oldies Goldies - Backlist party - Love Comes Twice

Here's my homage to the joy of older titles, those books that stayed in our hearts and we don't want to ever ever forget. I will be hosting eight romance books and/or authors (every Tuesday and Friday all through August! stay tuned, there may be giveaways! Some of these books are part of what made me write erotic romance to begin with...

I will jump right in with an all time favourite of mine, the majestic "Love comes twice" by Adonis Devereux.

Here's what a reviewer said:


Each time I read Adonis Deverueux's books, which are set in the wondrous world of Gilalion, I always find myself lost in the beautiful details, sights, sounds and powerful emotions. I always feel that I am reading a Greek tragedy mixed with the complexities of Lord of the Rings and the various clans and lands as Game of Thrones...
 ...Riane and Kiltarin's story is a highly erotic one full of great passion, devotion, and loyalty, however, their relationship is put to the test several times in the story which brings with it instances of sorrow, despair and a future in question...
I loved Riane and Kiltarin as a couple. When they explored together who Riane truly was and their discoveries lead them on a path that could tear them apart I was overwhelmed by Kiltarin's love for her. There were moments in the story when Kiltarin's rivals for Riane tried to pry her away from Kiltarin and I personally found it difficult to accept some of her reactions. Again this is just a testament of how well written the book is that it is able to draw such strong emotions from me...

And another:

...The heroine is an amazing, complex, mysterious, loving, lusty, dangerous, deeply dark woman named Riane. When the Tamari king, on his death-quest, finds her asleep under the ice of a frozen lake, and wakes her up, she has no memory of her identity, except that in her sleep ‘she heard the whispers of the world’. And if that is not awesome, I don’t know what is.
Much of what happens in the book has to do with the mystery of who and what Riane is, and it is quite a ride to discover the truth.
There are moments towards the end of the book when I thought, ‘Is this the same book I started the other day?’, such is the deep change that comes upon all the characters involved. It might easily have been a trilogy!

I always thought this book (with all the other Gilalion books from the same author) had enough world building in them to stand among the highest reaches of Fantasy Literature. The Tolkien and Game of  Thrones comparison mentioned in one of the reviews is not at all overdone. The added (hot!!) romance is just the cherry on the cake. Why not give this gorgeous oldie a go? If you like darkly intricate characters and tremendous storytelling, this is it!!


Found sleeping beneath the ice by a dying king, Riane has always known she was different. She draws men to her, her every movement a call to sex, but no man has ever stirred her blood until Kiltarin, the son of the God-King, comes to her. He brings color to her life, and she brings unspeakable sexual delight to his. Her beauty gives him courage to overcome his fear of his own immortality. But her true identity is still unknown, and when the secret of her birth is revealed, Kiltarin fears he cannot compete with the new rivals for her affection. And Riane cannot soothe his fears, because for her, love comes twice. 


 Other titles to check out by the same author: Bride for the God-King, Worth his Freedom, Burn like Ice, Chasing Earth and Flame and many others.


Monday, 2 January 2012

Worth his Freedom, a review




"Miria, a young noblewoman on the cusp of an arranged marriage, meets the Ausir Tsalrin, her father's mysterious assassin, and sparks fly immediately. Tsalrin is trapped by an ancient curse, and Miria cannot escape her father or the husband to whom he would sell her, a man who sees her merely as a political tool. Miria and Tsalrin's position is impossible, but neither one will give up their hidden love. Theirs is a story of struggle against abuse, bigotry, and paterfamilias. Their love is both their greatest danger and their only comfort as they search for their mutual freedom."


I had been looking forward to read Worth His Freedom, by Adonis Devereux, since it made its first appearance in Litopia’s Bragging Writes. There were three things about it, all ceaselessly tickling my curiosity. First, the cover, hot yet really elegant; second, the fact that it was written in tandem by husband and wife, which looked like a truly remarkable feat to a loner (creatively speaking) like me; and third, that the husband half of the duo, a fellow Litopian,  once threatened to whack my ass with a ruler, which seemed a delightfully auspicious way to start a friendship between, ahem, romance writers.

Ok, seriously, now.

The fact is that I was extremely curious to read into this completely original fantasy world, because I am a sucker for fantasy. I read more fantasy than romance, to be honest, and I was delighted that somebody had gone, invented a whole new universe and then set a romance novel in it. Maybe it’s just me, but I think this is a fantasy novel with strong (very strong) erotic-romance theme, not a romance novel with a fantasy setting. It completely transcends the romance genre (in all its multifarious sub-genres) because of the complexity and originality of its world, Gilalion.  The only other romance novel with such a rich original universe that comes to my mind is Lauren’s P. Burka’s “Wishbone”.

Gilalion draws you in and make you want more. I want to know about Lorins’ magic, Nohrs and Wyrms. I want to know more about the Ausir wars and history. I want to see the Ausir cities. I want to know about the complicated customs and religion of Nirrion. I want to know about the geography and the languages and, and…

I loved that Nirrion is not a medieval empire, but even older, classical in fact. There’s reclining dinners and lyres. There’s temples and cleansing rituals.  There’s also slavery and rather serious violence because Adonis Devereux does not pull punches (which is good).

Of course there is a love story. Now, as a writer of super-dissolute, multiple-partner erotica, I find some aspects of this love story a bit hard to bear. Not to put too fine a point to it, Tsalrin and Miria are a bit too obsessively jealous for my taste. Other than that, they are an engaging couple, and well deserving of the happy ending they get. Tsalrin is moody, dark and mysterious, as befits his role of cursed assassin. He is also however, a skilled artisan, which really raised my interest. It always bugs me when vampires, elves and immortals of various kinds waste away their long lives bemoaning their lonely lot and being generally miserable. If I were immortal (or going to live a few centuries at least) I would pick a hobby and get damn good at it. That’s what Tsalrin does, and it makes him a rare breed of sensible and sensitive creature. However, Miria is my favourite of the two, perhaps because one sees her growing up during the story and change from a tearful, soft girl into a seriously steely young woman.

There is of course sex, naughty wicked sex, because sex is a pretty pervasive aspect of the Nirrion society and all the characters are pretty uninhibited. There is more of it in the first half of the book, less in the second, where the plot takes precedence (it speaks for the quality of the plot and setting that I – smutty I - actually liked the second half of the book better than the first).

The style of the book was also a nice surprise in that it is written in a high, learned prose, which puts the antiquity and complexity of this world in even sharper relief.  Sometimes I wished the dialogues were less formal, more actual, but it may have jarred with the style of the narrative, so perhaps it’s better this way. There are many many names of places, creatures and gods which create the strong impression of a native language (several languages, actually) different from ours. Some of these names are wonderfully musical and keep singing in my head. Elendrie, Nistaran. Silbrios (=Forest-of-Stars), Mirmanduil. Tsalrin, of course.

All in all I am pretty enchanted by this read, and wish Adonis and Devereux could be closeted in a tower somewhere, and chained to their desks, and forced (with a ruler, if necessary) to produce three mighty, red, leather-bound volumes of Gilalion tales.

If the Long Lost Volumes of Gilalion Lore cannot be produced, I will for the moment content myself with their new release, “Bride for the God-King”, which was published just a few days ago and is set in the same universe.

Worth his Freedom @ Evernight
Bride for the God-King @ Evernight

KW