Book Review: Bleeding Violet and Slice of Cherry, by Dia Reeves
A few months ago, I was searching for female monster books to put on the 2011 Sirens reading list, and I stumbled across Dia Reeves's Bleeding Violet. Happily, authors have started to make the first chapters of books available on their websites, so I was able to take a sneak peek at Bleeding Violet (which was a very good thing because the cover of this book? Lord, the cover makes this look like the worst of the paranormal romance books).
Bleeding Violet, chapter one: Hanna shows up in Portero, alone, in the middle of the night. She's talking to her dead father (not a ghost, but perhaps a hallucination? Perhaps a spirit. I was never quite sure), about to meet her mother for the first time. But, in her inimitable Hanna way, instead of knocking, she listens to her father's advice, enters her mother's house uninvited, and starts making a sandwich, waking her mother in the process. At the end of the chapter, Hanna's mom asks Hanna, casually, if she's killed her aunt, and Hanna, just as casually, says she might have.
HOW COULD I NOT BUY THIS BOOK?
Okay, maybe lots of you could have not bought this book. Whatever. I bought the book.
And I loved the book. Loved, loved, fucking loved it. It turns out that Portero is the new and improved Hellmouth, with demons and monsters and doors to other worlds. New folks are called transies because they generally don't survive more than a couple weeks, and people who have lived in Portero for years wear all black (except to church) to avoid calling attention to themselves.
Hanna, however, wears nothing but purple. She talks to her dead father (and he talks back). She wants her mother to love her. She doesn't care that she might have killed her aunt. She hooks up with one of the Mortmaine (the green-wearing monster killers that protect the town from the worst of the gore, but that doesn't mean that you won't stumble across a severed head in the road on any given Tuesday afternoon), and then begs him to take her monster hunting.
Hanna is the best heroine I've read...well, I would say "years," but I read Fire last year, and Fire, too, rocked my world. But let's talk about Hanna. She's smart. She's resourceful. She's wild. She's powerful and fierce and angry. And oh, she's crazy, which means that you, the reader, have no idea if what's going on in this book is true or just another bit of crazy Hanna. I like to think it's all true.
Three things made this book: First, the world-building is freaking outstanding. Admittedly, I don't read horror (and this wasn't horror), but I've never read anything like Portero with its casual, everyday violence and gore and monsters -- and it's residents' casual, everyday reactions to violence and gore and monsters. There's no fear in this book, and it's fantastic because of it. And second, Hanna. Hanna is powerful and fierce and completely prone to rage and confused and lost and...perfect. (Warnings for self-harm triggers, which, whether real or not, was one of the most vivid scenes in the book.) Third, the language. I never notice language, and I noticed and adored Dia Reeves's turn of phrase. The language is just as wild and fun and out-of-control as Portero and Hanna are.
Bleeding Violet was my favorite read of 2010, and after Lips Touch: Three Times, which was practically perfect in every way, the best book I read in 2010.
Which also means that when Slice of Cherry came out on January 4, and Amazon.com, those incompetent fuckers, weren't going to ship it FOR THREE WEEKS, I canceled my order and Marbles, knowing my obsession, bought it for me for Epiphany. (What? Any holiday's a good holiday for gift-giving!)
Slice of Cherry is also set in Portero, and this time we have two main characters, Kit and Fancy Cordelle, sisters, best friends, totally co-dependent -- and oh, daughters of the Bonesaw Killer (who used antique bonesaws to dismember people in his cellar). It might be the genes, it might be Portero, but both Kit and Fancy have a compulsion to cut, cut, cut, cut...and they do, starting with a guy who breaks into their house, then continuing on to rapists, bullies, and abusers. It's a neat twist on a vigilante tale, where the motive is really bloodlust. Of course, in Portero, they're hardly the worst thing going.
And because it's Potero, Fancy and Kit don't kill people the usual way. Fancy can access her "happy place," where the land and the people do whatever she wants and she can ditch the evidence. And that's where the rift between Fancy and Kit begins. Kit wants to cut people; Fancy just wants to control them. Kit doesn't mind messy, brutal murders; Fancy wants to keep her hands clean and let other people do her murderous bidding. And with that and a couple boys whose father was a victim of the girls' father, the girls grow viciously apart, while continuing their violent good deeds.
Slice of Cherry was exactly the right amount different from Bleeding Violet: same town, same wild premise, same fearlessness, same rage-filled heroine(s), but totally different in who Kit and Fancy are and what their issues are and how they interact with Portero. Just as good, just as crazy, just as freaking fabulous, but with more anti-hero and more boys and more growing up.
I suspect it takes the right type of person to love these books. :)) These aren't books where people try to be good, whatever that means. They're powerful books, where women are fearless, angry and resourceful. Dia Reeves doesn't write shrinking-violet settings or plots or girls. And I really, really love her for it.
Bleeding Violet, chapter one: Hanna shows up in Portero, alone, in the middle of the night. She's talking to her dead father (not a ghost, but perhaps a hallucination? Perhaps a spirit. I was never quite sure), about to meet her mother for the first time. But, in her inimitable Hanna way, instead of knocking, she listens to her father's advice, enters her mother's house uninvited, and starts making a sandwich, waking her mother in the process. At the end of the chapter, Hanna's mom asks Hanna, casually, if she's killed her aunt, and Hanna, just as casually, says she might have.
HOW COULD I NOT BUY THIS BOOK?
Okay, maybe lots of you could have not bought this book. Whatever. I bought the book.
And I loved the book. Loved, loved, fucking loved it. It turns out that Portero is the new and improved Hellmouth, with demons and monsters and doors to other worlds. New folks are called transies because they generally don't survive more than a couple weeks, and people who have lived in Portero for years wear all black (except to church) to avoid calling attention to themselves.
Hanna, however, wears nothing but purple. She talks to her dead father (and he talks back). She wants her mother to love her. She doesn't care that she might have killed her aunt. She hooks up with one of the Mortmaine (the green-wearing monster killers that protect the town from the worst of the gore, but that doesn't mean that you won't stumble across a severed head in the road on any given Tuesday afternoon), and then begs him to take her monster hunting.
Hanna is the best heroine I've read...well, I would say "years," but I read Fire last year, and Fire, too, rocked my world. But let's talk about Hanna. She's smart. She's resourceful. She's wild. She's powerful and fierce and angry. And oh, she's crazy, which means that you, the reader, have no idea if what's going on in this book is true or just another bit of crazy Hanna. I like to think it's all true.
Three things made this book: First, the world-building is freaking outstanding. Admittedly, I don't read horror (and this wasn't horror), but I've never read anything like Portero with its casual, everyday violence and gore and monsters -- and it's residents' casual, everyday reactions to violence and gore and monsters. There's no fear in this book, and it's fantastic because of it. And second, Hanna. Hanna is powerful and fierce and completely prone to rage and confused and lost and...perfect. (Warnings for self-harm triggers, which, whether real or not, was one of the most vivid scenes in the book.) Third, the language. I never notice language, and I noticed and adored Dia Reeves's turn of phrase. The language is just as wild and fun and out-of-control as Portero and Hanna are.
Bleeding Violet was my favorite read of 2010, and after Lips Touch: Three Times, which was practically perfect in every way, the best book I read in 2010.
Which also means that when Slice of Cherry came out on January 4, and Amazon.com, those incompetent fuckers, weren't going to ship it FOR THREE WEEKS, I canceled my order and Marbles, knowing my obsession, bought it for me for Epiphany. (What? Any holiday's a good holiday for gift-giving!)
Slice of Cherry is also set in Portero, and this time we have two main characters, Kit and Fancy Cordelle, sisters, best friends, totally co-dependent -- and oh, daughters of the Bonesaw Killer (who used antique bonesaws to dismember people in his cellar). It might be the genes, it might be Portero, but both Kit and Fancy have a compulsion to cut, cut, cut, cut...and they do, starting with a guy who breaks into their house, then continuing on to rapists, bullies, and abusers. It's a neat twist on a vigilante tale, where the motive is really bloodlust. Of course, in Portero, they're hardly the worst thing going.
And because it's Potero, Fancy and Kit don't kill people the usual way. Fancy can access her "happy place," where the land and the people do whatever she wants and she can ditch the evidence. And that's where the rift between Fancy and Kit begins. Kit wants to cut people; Fancy just wants to control them. Kit doesn't mind messy, brutal murders; Fancy wants to keep her hands clean and let other people do her murderous bidding. And with that and a couple boys whose father was a victim of the girls' father, the girls grow viciously apart, while continuing their violent good deeds.
Slice of Cherry was exactly the right amount different from Bleeding Violet: same town, same wild premise, same fearlessness, same rage-filled heroine(s), but totally different in who Kit and Fancy are and what their issues are and how they interact with Portero. Just as good, just as crazy, just as freaking fabulous, but with more anti-hero and more boys and more growing up.
I suspect it takes the right type of person to love these books. :)) These aren't books where people try to be good, whatever that means. They're powerful books, where women are fearless, angry and resourceful. Dia Reeves doesn't write shrinking-violet settings or plots or girls. And I really, really love her for it.