I have a very long list of books to review over the next few weeks so today I'm going to get started with Water's Blood by Elaine Calloway.
Blurb:
Water's Blood is a paranormal fantasy romance set in New Orleans, and is part of an elemental series whose theme is good vs evil. The book blurb is below:
In the Elemental world, there is a rule: Never mate with humans.
But for Brooke, a Water Elemental stationed in New Orleans, following the rules can be tricky. She's spent countless millennia protecting the innocent from the evil fallen angels, who reap human souls and force them
to do their bidding.
Keeping her supernatural powers hidden--another rule--has begun to take its toll. When she meets Alex, an intuitive police officer with the NOPD, all bets are off. Not only does she fall in love with him, but she
conceives a half-breed child, Ella.
Universe, ruler of the Elemental World, is furious. For her indiscretion, Brooke is forbidden to share a life with Alex, the love of her life. Even worse, she cannot reveal her true identity to her own daughter.
When Brooke learns that the fallen angels plan to snare Ella's soul by Halloween, she is hurled into a war between good and evil. Brooke broke the rules once by allowing love to interfere with her mission. Now she and Alex must put consequences aside to break the rules again--if they wish to save their
daughter's soul.
Review:
Water's Blood takes place in New Orleans, which seems to be kind of a stereotype setting for paranormal writing. It's also the home town of the author so that point I can forgive her, but there are many other cliches throughout this book which have just grown tiresome. The idea of elementals, good versus bad is nothing new. The names of the characters I found to be completely unoriginal. While I understand the reasons behind some of the names, I wish more creativity had been used (Alex means protector, for example.) There's also quite a few naming conventions I'm not really certain why she chose those but I'm hoping more will be revealed through the series. The two antagonists have names which were also Saints, so for Fallen Angels to share names with saints... I'm no fan of Catholicism but as a Christian this borders on going too far for me. The use of the name Cristos made the character's role in this book fairly predictable but again it's also treading that fine line for me.
All of that aside, I did really enjoy this book. The writing is good, the story being well written and other than the above issues it is quite creative. I wasn't familiar with this author before hand but now I do intend to read more of the series in the future.
Water's Blood is available on Amazon for free on Kindle. It is also available in paperback for $13.
Bonus
I decided to look at Calloway's Amazon page to check for any freebies while I was thinking of it and I found two in this series. The first is Droplet, the prequel to Water's Blood.
Droplet is a short story prequel to Water's Blood that tells how Brooke became a Water Elemental, the training she received, and all things leading up to the day she would meet the human who would change her life forever.
Review: This is short enough that it can be read in about five minutes. It gives us an inside view as to how Brooke was created, and how her life began. It's short enough that I feel this would have been best added on to Water's Blood as a prequel and not a separate book. It is available for free on Amazon.
IGNITE is a prequel short story to the full-length novel RAGING FIRE by Elaine Calloway. Here we meet Phoenix, the hot-tempered Fire Elemental, when he is living the fat cat life on Wall Street. Everything is hunky-dory, but Universe is about to change things so Phoenix will be forced to face his deepest fears.
Review:
I read this in a matter of minutes. It's a quick insight into the mind of Phoenix and gives us an unexpected glance at the future of what might be in store for him in Raging Fire. I would have expected this to be included either at the end of Water's Blood and or at the beginning of Raging Fire, not as a separate book. Ignite is available for free on Amazon.
I have one last short story from Calloway to review today. This one is separate from the Elemental Clan series. The cover really creeps me out because the photo could be of myself if it weren't for the witch nose :P But seriously, I've even taken pictures of myself at this angle and it looks like me. Weird. Guess I found my twin, who ever this person is.
Blurb:
Vampires Wanted...
If only the audition casting call had said those two words. They didn’t. How was I supposed to know there was a vampire in the city? Even though New Orleans has its haunted myths and legends, I could never have known what awaited me when I rang the bell to that Victorian gate.
His name was Andrew, and he offered me the chance to leave my monotonous day job and become like him---a vampire. My instincts told me the offer was too good to be true. Hell, even Andrew warned me. Told me I needed to be careful what I wished for.
I couldn’t help myself. I needed that passion, that vampire lust that the undead have for everything around them. Even if it meant making a choice that I would soon regret. Andrew called the oath a vampire vow, whatever that means. And for a while, every sense was heightened, every color vibrant.
If only I’d listened to him. Always be careful what you wish for.
Be Careful What You Wish For is a vampire short story set in New Orleans. Elaine Calloway writes paranormal romance, paranormal fantasy, and ghost stories set in iconic cities. After growing tired of the overabundance of vampires in fiction, she decided to take a new approach with this short story. In addition to short fiction, she is writing The Elemental Clan Series, a good versus evil set of tales between Elementals and Fallen Angels.
Review: This is very short; I think I read it in under half an hour. Be Careful What You Wish For is short but fun and entertaining. The story is creative with a quite different look at the life and nature of vampires. I really enjoyed it and I will recommend it to any fans of paranormal stories, especially vampires.
Be Careful What You Wish For is available from Amazon for free.
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