Abby Sinclair, Books One and Two

I have just been reading up a storm lately!  I take books to work with me and I read on my breaks. Cumulatively, that's about an hour of reading every day that I'm at work. I mean, it's interrupted, of course, because I have to eat and people talk to me and stuff. But still. I get my books read bit by bit. I'm reading before classes and stuff too. Waiting for trains in the car. Just chillin in my room. It's great. It's like I've rediscovered the love or something.

I'm still writing like crazy, of course. I just finished part one and the interlude to my novel. I'm in the beginnings of part two now. It's hard to make it correlate to the first draft just because so much has changed, though. It's not like I try to make them stick together, just that I try to use the draft as a guide. And that's hard at the moment. hahaha. I barely used the Part One draft at all.

FYI, this post will almost certainly contain spoilers. But... you know... whatever.

Anyway. Here we are. To the designated content.

A Brush of Shadows (Abby Sinclair, Book #1): Allison Pang

Two things:
1. I've already blogged about this book. Wayyyyyy back. In like, March of 2011. hahahaha. (Good luck finding it. (All it takes is scrolling. (It's probably not worth your time.)))
2. I don't recall her ever wearing anything in the book like what's depicted on the cover. hahaha. Except that necklace, which isn't really important yet.

So here's the deal.
Abby is the TouchStone for the Fae Protectorate, who is actually a princess, though I don't recall if that's stated right off the bat. So that could probably be a spoiler. Oh well.

This incubus named Brystion (nicknamed Ion) shows up and asks her to help him find his sister (a succubus, in case that didn't occur to you) but "off the radar" in a manner of speaking.  There's some real shady business goin on and because the three paths (Heaven, Hell, Fae (who are apparently a middle ground or something if I recall correctly?)) are not exactly on the BEST of terms, things should be kept on the down-low.

Things get complicated, as they always do; Abby turns out to be a Dreamer, which is something that he explains the meaning of but we still don't really get to see it (even by the end of book 2) because Abby hasn't learned how to control it yet. She's haunted by some pretty severe nightmares, though; nightmares she can't let go.

The bad guy here is Maurice. It's been too long since reading it for me to tell you most accurately what the deal is here. But he basically, like, painted Brystion's sister (and then Abby and I think a couple other people?) into these ugly ass paintings. And Abby ends up stuck in this painting with sharks (her biggest fear (which is totally irrational since she's never even seen one)) and she almost dies and there's a whole bunch of really tense drama and stuff. And then blah blah blah she's saved and whatever.

Brystion and Abby have this super heated love affair--go figure--but it's... it's... I liked it. I mean, it was nice. beautiful, in a way. passionate. But he left her anyway. That pissed me off. But she gave him a place in her Heart of Dreaming or whatever, so... I mean... there's that. (He can't have one because he's an incubus.)

A Sliver of Shadow (Abby Sinclair, Book #2): Allison Pang

As an aside, this model has a different facial structure (and body frame) than the last one. I'm not sure how I feel about it... Also, all of her hair is pink and purple in this one instead of just her bangs... Meh.

So here we go again. Sorta.

Maurice is in jail but the Queen is going insane and the Fae court is kind of a wreck. Moira's baby is in Abby's care until she hands him off to his father (which is a scandal!) to take care of stuff.
Now there's romantic stuff brewing with her body guard Talivar, who turns out to be the prince and Moira's half-brother.

Clusterfuck after clusterfuck. The Queen shuts down the CrossRoads, which puts the entire metaphysical community afluster, strands some, kills others, etc. The Demons actually threaten war on the Fae, which is actually where this one kinda leaves off. Because Talivar and Abby accidentally start it and then Abby pulls a stupid in order to save him and Brystion--who have a weird love triangle thing going with Abby now, which is... strange... but amusing and interesting nonetheless.

I was VERY unhappy about where this book ended. Very unhappy indeed. If you're unhappy because I just said a whole ton of nothing, I apparently grew weary of typing this post. And there's too much that counts as serious plot spoilers. And I don't wanna ruin TOO much. I already dropped a couple huge things there, even if you don't realize it yet.

So the third one is published as of October 30th, which is good, because now I need to read it.

A Trace of Moonlight (Abby Sinclair, Book #3): Allison Pang

At least they stuck with the same blasted model this time.

I am praying that the Barnes & Noble in Minot has this one, since they don't have The Neon Court (the other book I'm attempting to acquire and may just have to order from Ferguson books here anyway. I at least get a free used book out of 'em for it.)

I really want to know where all this shit is going. This book  better address it or I'm going to be cranky. And go insane. Who knows.

So this is on the "BUY ME!! XD" list. Go figure.

They're fun to read, guys, honestly. There's all kinds of weird drama and shit but it's at least amusing. And Pang makes all these connections to random shit via Abby. She quotes all these movies and games and shows--no shit, she actually makes reference to Portal. ("The cake is a lie," she muttered at one point. It was great)--and half of her analogies are like, real-life references. She hits up LotR a lot... It's fun. (=