Thursday, January 7, 2010

This Week's Paranormal Recs in Books, TV and Movies

Welcome to 2010 and a new week of jam packed paranormal/fantasy & sci-fi goodies from books to movies to tv shows. Get your notepads, pens and calendars ready because this week is a good one!

Books


Inked Anthology  ~ January 5th

This one looks like a goodie. I was impressed with Marjorie M. Liu's and Yasmine Galenorn's short stories in the Never After Anthology (reviewed here last week) and it looks like they're together again. Woo hoo! Galenorn adds another Otherworld short story entry and Liu's story is one from her Hunter Kiss series. With Karen Chance and Eileen Wilks joining, I'm looking forward to sampling some new-to-me authors. Add this to your list if you're looking to check out any of these author's series.

Four of today's hottest urban fantasy writers together for the first time! From today's most provocative authors come four tales of urban fantasy and paranormal romance exploring body art that is more than it seems-in a world of magic and mayhem that always leaves its mark. This captivating tattoo theme surrounds each author's popular characters and worlds: Karen Chance's war mage Lia de Croissets, Marjorie M. Liu's demon-hunter Maxine Kiss, Yasmine Galenorn's Otherworld Intelligence Agency operative Camille D'Artigo, and Eileen Wilk's Lupi world.



Firespell (Dark Elite #1) by Chloe Neill ~ January 5th

I love this cover and I'm tempted to buy it on that alone. The blurb sounds awesome and I'm jonesing to finally dive into some young adult urban fantasy. A boarding school filled with hidden kick butt teenagers who live to keep the world safe from evil creatures? Sign me up please!

As the new girl at the elite St. Sophia’s boarding school, Lily Parker thinks her classmates are the most monstrous things she’ll have to face…

When Lily’s guardians decided to send her away to a fancy boarding school in Chicago, she was shocked. So was St. Sophia’s. Lily’s ultra-rich brat pack classmates think Lily should be the punchline to every joke, and on top of that, she’s hearing strange noises and seeing bizarre things in the shadows of the creepy building.

The only thing keeping her sane is her roommate, Scout, but even Scout’s a little weird—she keeps disappearing late at night and won’t tell Lily where she’s been. But when a prank leaves Lily trapped in the catacombs beneath the school, Lily finds Scout running from a real monster.

Scout’s a member of a splinter group of rebel teens with unique magical talents, who’ve sworn to protect the city against demons, vampires, and Reapers, magic users who’ve been corrupted by their power. And when Lily finds herself in the line of a firespell, Scout tells her the truth about her secret life, even though Lily has no powers of her own—at least none that she’s discovered yet…




Beyond the Night (Awakening Heroes #1) by Joss Ware ~ January 1st

Post Apocalyptic with a dash of action adventure and romance grabbed my attention from this book. I have yet to read the Colleen Gleason Gardella Vampire books but I hear they're pretty good reads. I'm definitely interested in checking out this series to see how it pans out.



A man with no future... When Dr. Elliott Drake wakes from a mysterious fifty-year sleep, the world as he knew it is gone. Cities are now desolate, and civilization is controlled by deadly immortals. Stranger still is Elliott's extraordinary new "gift"—he has the power to heal, but it comes with fatal consequences. A woman with a past... Jade barely escaped the immortals and is now hell-bent on revenge. She trusts no one... until Elliott. His piercing gaze and tempting touch shatter her defenses, but the handsome doctor seems to have dangerous secrets of his own. Is it safe to trust him with her heart? If they are to survive in this dark new world, Jade and Elliott must work together to fight the forces that take them beyond danger. Beyond desire.



TV
Two awesome shows return this week!


Legend of the Seeker

Saturdays starting January 9th

After a holiday hiatus, Legend of the Seeker is finally back! This premiere there's a surprise return of a character very close to Richard (in a sick and twisted way) who died last season. Now that the underworld has opened up any and everybody can come back to life with a bloodthirsty killing streak on their mind and this chick will definitely be coming after our heroes. I'd like to see what Cara does to her once she sees one of her "sisters" are back.

If you haven't checked out this series yet, run don't walk to see it. It's an amazing fantasy series with great kick butt characters, a fun adventure story and a dose of humor and chemistry. They're loosely based off Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series so they take a bit of leeway with the storytelling but don't let that stop you from enjoying each incarnation on its own.




Being Human


Sundays starting January 10

Our favorite paranormal roomies are back with a vengeance in Series 2 of Being Human. UKers and satelliters can enjoy the beginning of the season this Sunday which means the BBCA versions shouldn't be too far behind.

When last we left off, resident vampire Mitchell was stabbed and near dying, werewolf George was trying to help him stay alive and ghost Annie's door opened for her final resting place. Seeing as the trio is together again in the promos, I imagine Annie stayed and it'd be interesting to see how they got Mitchell back in tip top condition.

Definitely check out this series if you want something new in the paranormal realm. It's funny, it's dark, it's awesome and very fresh even though the blurb doesn't sound like much. Great writing and acting on this show. I hope there will be more than six eps this time around!

Check out the awesome new trailer. The song is Howl by Florence and the Machine and it's been in my head all week!








Movies
Finally it's arrived!

Daybreakers ~ January 8th

Starring Ethan Hawke, Sam Neil and Willem Dafoe to name a few, this is another original goodie in the vampire department. Daybreakers features a future in 2019 where humans are going extinct, vampires have taken over the world and are using humans to harvest blood. Now, as the human population is dwindling, both sides are taking drastic measures to sustain both the human side and the vampire side. It looks like there will be all out war between the two and in the middle is Ethan Hawke's character, a hematologist.

The trailer has been making the rounds for months now with the awesome Placebo/Kate Hill cover Running Up That Hill and there's also a pretty cool PSA promo vid.

Really looking forward to this one!

Enjoy the goodies and let us know what you think of them or if you have any recs for us!

4 comments:

Annie Nicholas said...

I have got to check out Being Human! I wonder if it's on my BBC channel and when.

Teresa D'Amario said...

I watch Legend of the seeker. Managed to get through about 8 of the books too, but then started getting bored. Instead of the challenges getting harder, they were slowing down, so I gave it up. Hubby read all of them though. The series does NOT follow the books. It takes scenes from all of the different books and incorporates them into the show, which can backfire if they aren't careful. I've seen scenes from book one in season 2, and I've seen scenes from book 4 in season 1. I understand why, and if you haven't read the books, you'd never notice, but I worry they'll do like the Harry Potter series, inadvertently write out a character they think isn't important, only to find out in book 7 that he's key!

Rae Lori said...

Annie, you should! I think you'd enjoy it. :-) I know last year they broadcast the first series plus a behind the scenes show. I'm pretty sure they'll show it again most likely to get ready for S2.

Hey Teresa! Thanks for your feedback about the story. I'll probably read the books after the series finishes so I can see them separately. Eek. I'm a little nervous because I heard about them being a bit slow!

Z(Aasiyah/Nolwynn) said...

Oooh, goodies and more goodies!

Thanks for the heads-up, girl. I really got to check those out!

Hugs

Z(Aasiyah/Nolwynn)