No, no, bad me.
Letting this slip, mustn't allow that.
Fortunately for us all, about an hour ago I woke up with my body unable to decide whether it needed to puke or eat. It seems to have found a middle ground, and settled out for some bread and Tums. So I was awake, in pain, with nothing to do but think about how miserable I felt... which naturally leads to thinking of blogging!
News has been rather glum lately. They trained me in the cash office just in time for the cash office lady to go on vacation... then come back to her grandmother dying, and being out another week for that. /-: Then my mom called, and I found out things finally seem to have exploded between my sister and her bf. I had Mon-Wed off, but Wed, I got a call from work asking if I could come in so that our cash office lady could come in to cover for one of our front lanes managers, whose husband - apparently rather up-and-down since a major stroke last year - had been given 48 hours to live by his doctors.
Add in some half-hearted drama from my WoW guild, and life just doesn't get much better. (-;
However, I did find Sherrilyn Kenyon's most recent book - Sins of the Night. It's amazing what a good book can do for your general sense of contentment. While Kenyon started off much like any romance author, she quickly set herself apart simply because of her premise. She's recreated the entire vampire mythos, based around Greek mythology - essentially the "vampires" were an uber-race (Apollites) created by Apollo, then tricked by jealous humans (and other gods, I think) to kill his favored mistress, and finally cursed by Apollo to die in the light of his symbol (the sun) and die upon their 27th birthday. (The age his beloved mistress was killed.) They discovered that by drinking the blood and absorbing the soul of human beings that they could extend their life, thus becoming Daimons... but the gods weren't too terribly happy about that, so Artemis created the Dark-Hunters. They have many abilities and traits of the Apollites (inability to survive in the sun, super-strength, increased psychic powers, eternal agelessness), but they use them to hunt down and kill the Apollites who have gone Daimon. Artemis chooses them when they die a death that causes their souls to cry out in true anguish and despair, and she comes to them, allows them one day to exact their revenge, and in return they give her possession of their soul (because they can't be given the powers of the Dark-Hunters and have a soul at the same time - think it'd be too much power or sommat, need to reread some of the earlier ones to be sure why) and eternal service.
Of course, because of the man Artemis put in charge of the Dark-Hunters bargained for it, the Dark-Hunters do have a way out. If they fall in love, the person they fall in love with can take their soul and essentially reapply it to their dying body. Of course, they have to be mortally wounded, such that if anything goes wrong they're just dead, but without a soul, which condemns them to a particularly savage fate; and holding a soul burns the flesh of humans enough to leave a scar and (I think on one case) possibly even cost the loss of the hand used to hold it. So they have to be pretty darn sure when the time comes.
But the Dark-Hunter books are great to read, because you can really *see* how Kenyon's writing abilities develop. The first book was fairly so-so, not bad but not really amazing... but they get steadily beter, and the last three books have really been good enough to qualify almost as fantasy rather than romance. The overall draw of her books is the slow unveiling of just how the Dark-Hunters were originally created, the relationship between Artemis and Acheron (the man/god/Atlantean-but-not-Apollite-we-think she created the Dark-Hunters to guilt back under her control), and most of all, the growing history of Atlantis and Acheron. Each book, of course, has its couple, and each couple has its own merits or lack thereof, but each of their stories furthers the world and overlying story. ( Um, which is the Daimons finally having gathered under one banner and focused on taking Acheron down. Sort of. Bit more, but it gets complicated at that point. (-; )
I also have to say that Kenyon truly broke away from being simply a romance author for me when, in an amazingly well-done... bit, one of the long-run favorite characters kills himself to force Artemis into a decision. So many of the relationships in the series aren't romantic, or are romantic but terribly complicated and tragic, and the fact that I spent pages bawling my eyes out over that particular character, and spent an hour or so afterwards just sort of in shock that the series had taken that turn... *shakes her head* No. I look for her in the romance section, but she's not one of the authors I turn to primarily for romance. She's a world/concept author, and is slowly becoming a pretty solid character one as well.
Anyhoo, my stomach seems to have forgiven me whatever sins it was punishing me for, and I do have to go to work tomorrow at some point, so I'm off to try the sleep thing again. (-:
Fortunately for us all, about an hour ago I woke up with my body unable to decide whether it needed to puke or eat. It seems to have found a middle ground, and settled out for some bread and Tums. So I was awake, in pain, with nothing to do but think about how miserable I felt... which naturally leads to thinking of blogging!
News has been rather glum lately. They trained me in the cash office just in time for the cash office lady to go on vacation... then come back to her grandmother dying, and being out another week for that. /-: Then my mom called, and I found out things finally seem to have exploded between my sister and her bf. I had Mon-Wed off, but Wed, I got a call from work asking if I could come in so that our cash office lady could come in to cover for one of our front lanes managers, whose husband - apparently rather up-and-down since a major stroke last year - had been given 48 hours to live by his doctors.
Add in some half-hearted drama from my WoW guild, and life just doesn't get much better. (-;
However, I did find Sherrilyn Kenyon's most recent book - Sins of the Night. It's amazing what a good book can do for your general sense of contentment. While Kenyon started off much like any romance author, she quickly set herself apart simply because of her premise. She's recreated the entire vampire mythos, based around Greek mythology - essentially the "vampires" were an uber-race (Apollites) created by Apollo, then tricked by jealous humans (and other gods, I think) to kill his favored mistress, and finally cursed by Apollo to die in the light of his symbol (the sun) and die upon their 27th birthday. (The age his beloved mistress was killed.) They discovered that by drinking the blood and absorbing the soul of human beings that they could extend their life, thus becoming Daimons... but the gods weren't too terribly happy about that, so Artemis created the Dark-Hunters. They have many abilities and traits of the Apollites (inability to survive in the sun, super-strength, increased psychic powers, eternal agelessness), but they use them to hunt down and kill the Apollites who have gone Daimon. Artemis chooses them when they die a death that causes their souls to cry out in true anguish and despair, and she comes to them, allows them one day to exact their revenge, and in return they give her possession of their soul (because they can't be given the powers of the Dark-Hunters and have a soul at the same time - think it'd be too much power or sommat, need to reread some of the earlier ones to be sure why) and eternal service.
Of course, because of the man Artemis put in charge of the Dark-Hunters bargained for it, the Dark-Hunters do have a way out. If they fall in love, the person they fall in love with can take their soul and essentially reapply it to their dying body. Of course, they have to be mortally wounded, such that if anything goes wrong they're just dead, but without a soul, which condemns them to a particularly savage fate; and holding a soul burns the flesh of humans enough to leave a scar and (I think on one case) possibly even cost the loss of the hand used to hold it. So they have to be pretty darn sure when the time comes.
But the Dark-Hunter books are great to read, because you can really *see* how Kenyon's writing abilities develop. The first book was fairly so-so, not bad but not really amazing... but they get steadily beter, and the last three books have really been good enough to qualify almost as fantasy rather than romance. The overall draw of her books is the slow unveiling of just how the Dark-Hunters were originally created, the relationship between Artemis and Acheron (the man/god/Atlantean-but-not-Apollite-we-think she created the Dark-Hunters to guilt back under her control), and most of all, the growing history of Atlantis and Acheron. Each book, of course, has its couple, and each couple has its own merits or lack thereof, but each of their stories furthers the world and overlying story. ( Um, which is the Daimons finally having gathered under one banner and focused on taking Acheron down. Sort of. Bit more, but it gets complicated at that point. (-; )
I also have to say that Kenyon truly broke away from being simply a romance author for me when, in an amazingly well-done... bit, one of the long-run favorite characters kills himself to force Artemis into a decision. So many of the relationships in the series aren't romantic, or are romantic but terribly complicated and tragic, and the fact that I spent pages bawling my eyes out over that particular character, and spent an hour or so afterwards just sort of in shock that the series had taken that turn... *shakes her head* No. I look for her in the romance section, but she's not one of the authors I turn to primarily for romance. She's a world/concept author, and is slowly becoming a pretty solid character one as well.
Anyhoo, my stomach seems to have forgiven me whatever sins it was punishing me for, and I do have to go to work tomorrow at some point, so I'm off to try the sleep thing again. (-: