Lord of the Vampires by Gena Showalter

Lord of the Vampires by Gena Showalter

Lord of the Vampires is the first book in Harlequin's Royal House of Shadows series, a set of four paranormal romances, each based based on a fairy tale. Lord of the Vampires is inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Jill Monroe’s Lord of Rage by "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," while Lord of the Wolfyn by Jessica Andersen is based on "Little Red Riding Hood" and Nalini Singh's Lord of the Abyss on "Beauty and the Beast."

I haven't read any of the other books in the Royal House of Shadows series and based on my experience with Lord of the Vampires, I'm not sure that I'd want to. I like the premise of the series, which is why I requested a review copy of the first installment, but I'm baffled by the execution. I really did not enjoy Lord of the Vampires at all. The only reason that I didn't give up on the novel entirely is that I'd been promised a retelling of a fairytale (at the time that I was reading the novel I didn't know which tale Showalter had taken as her inspiration) and I was determined to find that story. I didn't, though. Alice in Wonderland didn't cross my mind as a possible inspiration because it is not a fairy tale. And while looking back now I can see how Showalter used Alice in Wonderland as a jumping-off point, I'm not sure that I'd have seen Alice in Wonderland in Lord of the Vampires without having been told to.

While the lack of an obvious fairy tale inspiration was a disappointment to me, it was by no means the only one. I couldn't connect to either the hero or the heroine and, more important given the fact that Lord of the Vampires is a romance novel, their relationship lacked any semblance of romance. Yes, there was sexual chemistry, but lust and ownership completely overwhelmed any bit of connection I saw between the two. Jane was not a sympathetic character and her willingness to go along with Nicolai made little sense in the face of his treatment of her. The only thing Nicolai had going for him was magnetic sexuality. He was domineering and manipulative and he lacked much in the way of redeeming characteristics.

The story was over complex difficult to follow with its multiple flashbacks and magic-induced memory loss (maybe this confusion is an intentional nod to Alice in Wonderland) and it succeeds in feeling both slowly paced and rushed. Suffice it to say that I couldn't wait for this one to end. I haven't read much of Showalter's work (just one of her young adult novels), but I suspect that Lord of the Vampires not typical given how strong her following is.

disclosure: I received a review copy of Lord of the Vampires from Harlequin Nocturne via NetGalley.

NetGalley

This morning as I was catching up on my blog reading, I happened across a reference to NetGalley.¹ It sounded promising so I went to check it out straight away.

NetGalley "delivers secure, digital galleys to professional readers." The site considers you a professional reader if you are a reviewer, blogger, journalist, librarian, bookseller, educator, or member of the media. That definition is pretty broad and it may well cover the majority of this blog's readers.

Here's how it works:
You create an account on the site, after which you can search all the books available for request (you can also browse the catalog by genre, publisher, or date added).
Once you have an account you can request any of the titles, but almost all of the requests are vetted by the publishers (I did request one title that had automatic approval). Each publisher has different reviewer guidelines, which are outlined on the What are publishers looking for? page. Because the publishers screen you before approving your requests, it seems like you'll have better luck if you include lots of information in your profile (they call the part of the profile that the publishers can see your "public bio").
It seems like the majority of the time you'll be able to get the books you want in a format that'll work with the reader of your choice (using Adobe Digital Editions for rights management just like when you borrow ebooks from the library), but NetGalley also has a web-based reader.
Once you read the book, you still post your review in whatever places you would normally post it (whether that's on your blog, bookseller websites, or other review sites like LibraryThing and GoodReads), but notify the publisher about your review (and share a copy) through NetGalley (more details about this are on the Before you Request page).
The site also has Groups and Communities, but I haven't yet figured out what their purpose or how they work.

In any case, I have a long train ride on the schedule for Saturday so I've requested a bunch of books in the hopes of getting approved for a few in time to load them onto my Nook before the trip.

1. It was in this post on The Olive Reader (a blog associated with HarperPerennial).
   Another aside: the book mentioned in the post (Domestic Violets) sounds promising, doesn't it? I requested it via NetGalley so I'll be posting a review once I've read it.

library books on the nook

I got a Nook for Christmas! The 3G/WiFi one, which is what I wanted since we don't have wireless at home, with the Alice in Wonderland case. I am a very lucky girl.

When I wrote about the Nook earlier this month (see post), I mentioned that library ebook-friendliness was one of its biggest benefits. I have to admit that I had a bit of trouble getting library ebooks to work on my Nook (it's quite easy if you do everything in the right order, but if not, it's a huge headache) so I thought I'd post about what I did wrong and how I fixed it for the benefit of future new users frantically searching the internet for a solution to their problem.

OK, first you need to know that even though you are getting a PDF or EPUB book from the library, the file will most likely end with ACSM. You can just drag those files onto your nook "my documents" folder like you could if you wanted to load a normal PDF on the Nook. ACSM stands for "Adobe Content System Message" - rather than being the ebook itself, it is your authorization for access to the book. You need to use Adobe Digital Editions (which handles rights management) as a middleman. Here's a video from nooktalk that goes over this and how to setup ADE for use with your Nook. As I mentioned above, follow the instructions in order and you will have no problem.

Here's what I did wrong. Before I worried about library books I decided to try getting a GoogleBook onto my Nook. You need ADE for that so when I get up ADE on my computer I used an AdobeID associated with my blogging gmail account (which is NOT the email address I use for my Barnes and Noble account). I've read that having your Adobe ADE authorization account information match your B&N account information isn't necessary, but (at least in my experience) it is.

With my ADE set up and authorized to that gmail account, I could get the library books downloaded and onto the Nook, but when I tried to read them I would get a "user not activated" error. After wasting a huge amount of time on the internet trying to figure out the solution (as well as multiple un- and re-installs of ADE), I determined that 3 things were necessary to fix the problem.

1. 1. Update my AdobeID to match my B&N account -
   I didn't need to create a new account, once you are logged into Adobe you can change the email address used as your login)
2. Get my ADE to associate with the new AdobeID -
   the magic combination is Control-Shift-D, hit those keys while ADE is open and you can deauthorize your ADE and then authorize using the correct AdobeID
3. Get my Nook to "forget" its Adobe-authorization -
   Figuring out this problem (and then its solution) was my big hangup. When the Nook is connected to your computer and you can access its drive, delete these two folders (contents and all): "Digital Editions" and ".adobe-digital-editions". Don't worry, the only thing you'll lose are the files you can't access anyway (all your other stuff is stored in different folders). Once they are gone, the next time ADE will meet the Nook as if for the first time and let you authorize the Nook to the proper AdobeID. Ta da!

Hope this helps.