"Infinity" by Sherrilyn Kenyon (YA and Adult, Fantasy)

Nick Gautier is a 14 year old student who is often picked on by the more privileged students at his school.  He is from a broken home with a father in jail for murder and a mother who became a stripper to make ends meet.   While she loves him, Nick's mom keeps buying him loud Hawaiian shirts from Goodwill to wear to school, which doesn't help his image any.  Weird things start to happen in New Orleans and living teenage zombies (as opposed to undead ones) are eating his classmates.  Who's controlling them?  How do they stop the zombies?  Why do they keep coming after Nick?  And who is this guy who says he's related to Nick and trying to help him?  Is he really helping or is he the cause of the weird events?

"Infinity" poses an interesting dilemma for me.  It's a great read, and is written with a 14 year old protagonist so you'd think it was young adult lit, however, the lead character is also in her adult fantasy novels, although he's 10 years older.  I enjoyed the story overall, and it was great to see Nick as a young lad and how he met the other characters and became a Squire, but her adult novels are certainly not appropriate for middle school students, given the sexual content in them.  This book, however, is appropriate for both middle school and high school students and contains nothing more than a single kiss for romantic involvement.

"Iorich" by Steven Brust (Fantasy Fiction)

I am a long-time fan of Steven Brust, however this latest edition to the "Jhereg" series, "Iorich" fell a little short of the mark for me.  I enjoy the fast paced action, well developed plot and characters, as well as the excellent dialog in his novels.  "Iorich" did have most of those qualities, but I found that it dragged on more than I would have liked.  Perhaps it was due to the mostly absent usual cast of characters, I'm not sure.  On the plus side though, this book got me thinking about how appropriate this series would be for middle and high school readers.  There isn't any sex or foul language in the book, and not even any overly descriptive violence.  The author even tries to incorporate social issues to get people thinking, which is great.

"Fantasy in Death", JD Robb (adult, mystery, fantasy)

"Fantasy in Death" is the latest chapter in the Eve Dallas "in death" series about a futuristic homicide detective.  JD Robb is Nora Roberts, however, unlike her fluffy romances, the Eve Dallas stories are focused around a homicide that Eve and her entourage try to solve.  The connecting storylines and characters make these books more interesting and really should be read in order to preserve the continuity.  This particular edition has an interesting twist in that the cause of the murders stump even Eve for most of the novel.  If you're familiar with suspension of disbelief, you'll probably solve it in the first few chapters as I did.  However, as they find more information and try to come up with alternate versions of 'what happened', you may begin to doubt yourself...again, as I did.  LOL  Given a couple scenes, this book is recommended for adults only.

"Born of Ice", Sherrilyn Kenyon

"Born of Ice" is the latest in a new series by Sherrilyn Kenyon.  This series is NOT appropriate for young adults, unless they be of the older variety, given that there are sex scenes in the book.  This is an interesting new world placed sometime in the future when we have started populating other planets and have no trouble traveling between them.  Most of the characters seem to have their own personal spaceships, similar to how we have cars now.  The first two installments deal with two couples who are also friends, and this one is about the son of one of those couples and him finding his true love...who also happens to be a spy/slave sent to find or manufacture evidence against him and send him away for life.  It's a good quick read and an excellent form of brain candy.

"Flirt", Laurell K Hamilton (adult-fantasy)

"Flirt" is the latest addition to Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series.  This book is a much smaller addition than her usual books are, but it's nice that it has an interesting plot and only one sex scene instead of the copious amounts of sex that has been found in her works as of late.  In this one, Anita turns down a few animator jobs but then one of her would be clients tries to force her to do it by kidnapping her and threatening to kill 3 of her loved ones.  Oh, and Anita crosses a line and also adds a lion to her list of animals to call.

"Sizzle", Julie Garwood (Adult-Romance/Mystery)

I enjoyed "Sizzle".  It wasn't anything out of this world, but the story was interesting and had a nice twist in the end, and I liked the character development as well.  There were a few humorous lines and the sex scenes weren't over the top, but nicely done as well without all the graphic language that many authors are using these days.  Julie Garwood's books are light, entertaining and always a nice vacation for the mind.

"Never After", anthology (Adult-Fantasy)

I'm enjoying many of the short stories in the "Never After" anthology by Laurell K Hamilton, Yasmine Galenorn, Marjorie M Liu and Sharon Shinn.  I love the fairy tales with a twist idea, where the heroine never ends up with the guy with whom she would have traditionally fallen head over heals in love.  In particular, I enjoyed Hamilton's fairytale as it reminded me of her earlier Anita Blake novels where the plot revolved around a murder mystery, as opposed to being all about relationships and sex.  Recommended for anyone looking to explore some new authors, although not an accurate telling of their current books.  Still, if you enjoy one of the authors, there's a chance you may find another to try out.  I highly recommend local libraries for forays into authors that you've never read before.  Might as well find out if you enjoy their longer works before you invest money into them!

"Magic to the Bone" by Devon Monk (Adult - Fantasy)

Pretty good read actually.  This is a new author to me and I found her writing to be quite engaging.  She created a new world with an interesting female protagonist.  Decent character development and plot lines as well as witty dialog.  To summarize, it's a world where everyone can access and use magic, however the magic comes with a personal price.  If you don't feel like paying the price and don't pay much attention to legality, you can offload it onto an innocent bystander.  Allie Beckstrom's job is to hunt down these heinous criminals and bring them to justice.  But what happens if the jerk is her own father?  Beware, not everything is as it seems when corporate spies get involved.