Amanda Pillar

Graced by Amanda Pillar is a wonderful paranormal romance book. I stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish this book. Graced is a complicated book. I will try and summarize it without giving away any spoilers.

Graced is set in a time where advancements have come and then gone. They use coal, sodium lamps, carriages pulled by horses. However, they do have a sewage system (thank goodness)! The different types of citizens are vampires, werewolves, humans with colored eyes (graced), humans with show more brown-eyes (non), and the slaves (yes, slaves). Most of the vampires are aristos and are considered the upper class (rich and have titles). The vampires have an elitist attitude. They believe they are the best and that humans all want to be vampires. The Honorable Dante Kipling is the son of a rich aristo and he believes that there is something different about the humans with colored eyes. He wants to find out what is different about them.

Clay Lovett is a very old werewolf (but looks young). He was summoned to town by Olive Brown (more on her below). While in town he meets Elle (see below) and is fascinated by her. Clay goes out of his way to find her, get to know her, and flirt (which leads to them getting to know each other much better).

Eleanor “Elle” Brown is a city guard with red hair and hazel eyes. Her one goal is to protect her kid sister, Emmie (Esmerelda). Emmie is seven years old and has bright teal eyes. The humans with colored eyes do have special gifts and they want it kept a secret. Elle and Emmie’s grandmother, Olive Brown has green eyes and can read minds. She also runs an agency that supplies servants and slaves to the rich and aristos. Someone has killed two graced girls recently and Olive sends Elle into the Kipling household to investigate.

Unfortunately for Elle things do not go well in the Kipling household. Elle ends up in a coffin and about to be cremated. Clay and Emmie rescue Elle from the coffin and then Clay tries to keep her safe (and hidden from her grandmother). What happens next is very funny! Dante is forced to get married after attacking Elle without her permission, Clay tries to keep Elle safe, Clay and Elle want to get custody of Emmie (to protect her and keep her secret), and Elle has to adjust to being a vampire (and not attack the humans in the household for food).

I give Graced 4.5 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed this book, but there is a lot of sex in this book. Sex seems to be very commonplace. Evidently sex with servants and slaves is normal (and they cannot object) as well as sleeping your way through the town’s populace (as well as three ways, four ways, sleeping with men and women). I do not think that the book needed so much of this element. The story is great without all the sex. I found Graced to a delight to read and look forward to reading more books by Amanda Pillar.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley (courtesy of the publisher) in exchange for an honest review. show less

Captive by Amanda Pillar is a novella set in the Graced universe, but at a much earlier period of story history. Although a few character names might be familiar, the two stories stand completely alone. If anything, Captive fills in some of the "historical" backstory that didn't fit into Graced, while telling its own story.

I enjoyed Captive quite a bit. I would go so far as to say I enjoyed the start of the novella more than I enjoyed Graced. This is probably partly because the main show more character is a scientist and I am biased. Where Graced was set seemingly very long after the apocalypse, so to speak, that resulted from the creation of vampires and werewolves and the subsequent wars, Captive is set much closer to that time period (but still after it).

The main(est) character, Laney, is a geneticist who had been working on "cures" for the vampire need for human blood and the werewolf need for human liver. Not, to be clear, changing their species back to human, just removing their need to farm humans. Having originally been part of a werewolf, er, farm, Laney, her sister and their fellow humans are captured by vampires in a raid. Their main goal is to survive until a way out presents itself. Unbeknownst to them, other characters are also working on rescuing them from the vampires.

I mentioned earlier that I particularly enjoyed the start of Captive. It would be more accurate to say that I enjoyed almost all of Captive but I found the ending rather abrupt. The main plot arc of escaping the vampires is resolved, but a lot of romantic (and other, spoilery) subplots are introduced near the end and I don't think this novella was long enough to give them enough space to properly develop. The time jumps at the end, to get to the second last chapter and the epilogue, didn't really help on that front. I think it would have been more enjoyable had the last portion of the book been longer. I certainly wouldn't've minded reading more of it.

Overall I liked Captive, even if I would have preferred more of it. I would recommend it to fans of Graced, but want to stress again that both stories stand alone quite well. I will certainly be reading any other novellas or novels Pillar writes set in the same world. This was almost a 4-star read, but I took off half a star for the abruptness of the ending.

3.5 / 5 stars show less

Graced by Amanda Pillar is the author's début novel, although she has edited several anthologies (such as Ishtar) and had several short stories published. I also interviewed her last year as part of the Snapshot. Graced is secondary world urban/pre-industrial fantasy with vampires, werewolves and magic — Graced — humans.

City Guard Elle Brown has one goal in life: to protect her kid sister, Emmie. Falling in love–and with a werewolf at that–was never part of the deal.

Life, show more however, doesn't always go to plan, and when Elle meets Clay, everything she thought about her world is thrown into turmoil. Everything, that is, but protecting Emmie, who is Graced with teal-colored eyes and an unknown power that could change their very existence. But being different is dangerous in their home city of Pinton, and it's Elle's very own differences that capture the attention of the Honorable Dante Kipling, a vampire with a bone-deep fascination for a special type of human.

Dante is convinced that humans with eye colors other than brown are unique, but he has no proof. The answers may exist in the enigmatic hazel eyes of Elle Brown, and he's determined to uncover their secrets no matter the cost...or the lives lost.

Graced is a very character-driven book. There are four point of view characters not leaving much room for anything other than their interacting story lines. The physical setting, which as I said is pre-industrial, is mostly a background sketch in front of which the characters do their thing. The social setting, however is more fleshed out. We get a good idea of social hierarchy, especially as imposed by different magical traits. For example, the main city is more or less run by aristocratic vampires, aristocratic humans also exist and the poorest people, especially those that fall into debt, end up as slaves to the vampires.

There are also humans with magical powers called the Graced. The type of magical ability is dictated by eye colour, with brown being no power and other colours having telepathy, telekinesis and so forth. Elle, my favourite of the main characters, comes from a Graced family but has no particular power herself, being half brown. Her significantly younger sister, however, has a new eye colour and Elle feels it's her responsibility to look after her and not let her get pulled into their grandmother's suspect machinations. Elle can't stop herself being pulled into her grandmother's plans, however, and ends up on an undercover mission with an unreliable vampire.

Dante, aforementioned unreliable vampire, is a unique character about whom I have mixed feelings. At first it looks like he's being positioned as the bad guy, but he ends up being a sympathetic character, more or less. He's asexual but also painted as odd for other reasons. Other characters call him a sociopath at least once, but I don't think that's medically/psychologically accurate. He doesn't understand other people and behaves unpredictably himself because of it.

The other two characters are Clay, Elle's hot werewolf love interest, and Anton, an ordinary human aristocrat who gets tangled up with Dante (who in turn gets tangled up with Elle, bringing all the characters together).

If you enjoy strongly character-driven stories or like urban fantasy then I highly recommend Graced. If you like the setting to be a character in its own right this one might not quite be for you. This book is self-contained, but the ending is left open for a possible (but not mandatory) sequel.

4 / 5 stars

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Ishtar, edited by Amanda Pillar and KV Taylor, is a collection of three novellas about the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of love and war, Ishtar. The three novellas cover the past, the present and the future and together tell an overarching story of Ishtar's trail through thousands of years of humanity. Overall, I was impressed at how well the three novellas hung together and told a cohesive overarching story.

"The Five Loves of Ishtar" by Kaaron Warren is a story spanning thousands of show more years in the Mesopotamian region. Told from the perspectives of a series of Ishtar's washerwomen — each the daughter of Ishtar's previous washerwoman — it focuses partly on the men in Ishtar's life and partly on life generally at that time. From a god to Gilgamesh to kings, Ishtar's loves are broad and at times it seems her life revolves around them. At times war is her central concern and her army.

I liked the younger Ishtar, before she grew quite so jaded and belligerent, when she was still unsure of herself and cared at least a little about others (which is an ironic statement if you read the story). It was interesting to watch her and her concerns change through the eyes of a succession of servants.

What I also found interesting was how this story served to showcase the broadness of Warren's writing abilities. "The Five Loves of Ishtar" is very different to her other work that I've read; not only vastly different in setting to Through Splintered Walls and Slights, but also different in tone, theme and types of characters. It makes me excited to see what sort of writing I will encounter from her next.

"And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living" by Deborah Biancotti is similar in tone and setting (modern Sydney) to the stories in Bad Power but with Ishtar, rather than superheroes, of course. It follows Adreienne, a detective given an unusual set of homicides to investigate. Of course we know the supernatural origins of the bodies — since Ishtar has to show up at some point — but it was still a compelling story. I enjoyed watching Adreienne slowly uncover the truth. The extra characterisation Biancotti throws in, particularly around Adreienne's sister, was a nice touch that added depth to the story.

Interestingly enough, it was this story that convinced me to classify the collection as horror. Going in I was definitely expecting fantasy and dark fantasy elements, but when Warren's story wasn't as horrifying as some of her other work I assumed the collection overall might not quite count as horror. It does.

"The Sleeping and the Dead" by Cat Sparks is a post-apocalyptic tale set in a world with not much left in it other than sand. Doctor Anna is the protagonist and works at a fertility clinic in a desert with only strange death and sex worshipping nuns for company. There don't seem to be many men left in the world and when a few stumble upon the clinic, Anna and the nuns set out to find their leader.

My favourite aspect of this story was all the allusions to earlier events, particularly to Ishtar's roots. It relies on knowledge of the previous stories more than one would expect from an ordinary collection, but in this context it works beautifully. I enjoyed having more of an idea of what was going on than Anna did most of the time, and watching her come towards her own realisations.

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Overall, this is a strong collection. I like what Morrigan (the publisher) have been doing with themed collections (see also Grants Pass and The Phantom Queen) and I think Ishtar is an excellent example of how communal story-telling can work to great effect. I recommend Ishtar to fans of dark fantasy and horror.

4 / 5 stars

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