Saturday, October 13, 2012

Blog Tour: Review + Chattin' It Up: Demons & Lullabies by Kallysten

Promo + Giveaway

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    Demons & Lullabies
    (Book #2 in the Demons Age series - Can be read as a standalone) 

    Autographed Copy | Kallysten.net | Amazon (Kindle) | Amazon (Print) | BN | Smashwords | Createspace (Print) | Amazon UK
    Author: Kallysten
    Publisher: Self Published (August 27,2012)
    Genre: M/M, Paranormal, Romance, 321 pages
    eBook/Paperback Words: 107,000 words







    SUMMARY:
    Some little boys want to be firemen or astronauts when they grow up. From the moment Jacob understood what his fathers did, he never wanted to do anything but fight demons.

    Andrew, Jacob’s father and a vampire, fights demons because it’s a necessity: few others have the strength or skill to kill the strange creatures that started appearing the very night his son was born. He carries with him some guilt, too, and the suspicion that the magic that made Jacob’s very life possible also opened the way for the demons. The last thing he wants is for his son to ever join this fight and get hurt.

    As the years pass, however, and Andrew watches Jacob grow up and grow more determined, he slowly has to accept there’s little he can do to deter his son. It doesn’t help that Nicholas, Jacob’s other dad and Andrew’s Childe, starts giving Jacob sword-fighting lessons under the cover of playing, or that Jacob discovers his mother’s diaries and comes to the same conclusion Andrew did concerning his origins and the demons’.

    Through snapshots covering Jacob’s life from birth to adulthood, watch all three members of this unusual family change, grow up, and find their place in the world.


    MY REVIEW:
    Where to start. First off, Demons & Lullabies is a vampire story like no other. Yeah, there's the whole "can't go out in sunlight" thing and the "dying by steak" bit as well, but as far as the story goes, its something else entirely. And goes way deeper than just vampire blood running through your veins. 

    Demons & Lullabies is the first book that I have read that has spanned over seventeen years. SEVENTEEN years. You would probably think that, that is a major turn off and wouldn't want to pick up the book. And probably think "Wow, that book must really drag" or "Only 321 pages? It must be cutting back on a lot of details." Well, to assuage all you lovely bibliophiles out there, this book does NOT drag and it definitely doesn't cut out details. The story stays its focus on three characters, Andrew, Nicholas, and Jacob. Jacob is the Andrew and Nicholas' son and the story follows through Jacobs life. From when he was born and so on and so forth. I really enjoyed watching reading as Jacob grew older. How much different he is from other little kids, and not because he has two daddies, but the fact that he understands that he can't say that his dads are vampires. As Jacob got into his teens, I was falling more and more in love with him. *sigh* he's so young.

    I thought the characters were all very well developed. The book doesn't really tell you when the POV switches from one character to the other, but you can easily tell when that happens. Especially when Jacob is younger and the book switches to his POV, you're getting it from a 3 year old's perspective and I really liked that. Its like you're getting to see Jacob grow and growing with him as the book progresses. This book definitely has some M/M action going on and Kallysten doesn't hold back. She'll give it to you; lube and all! I really loved the relationship between Andrew and Nicholas. It wasn't always rainbows and unicorns. There was arguments like any other relationship, but I loved how they balanced each other. Where Andrew is strict and bossy (him being Nicholas' sire and all) and Nicholas being the more lenient parent, I thought that really separated them as characters. There wasn't as much action as I would have liked. A little more demon fighting scenes would have been awesome, but there were times where I didn't need the action scenes to get that "Oh-my-gosh-sitting-at-the-edge-of-my-seat" moments.

    Overall, I really enjoyed this book and was really easy to read. I would definitely recommend this book. 

    MY RATING:

    EXCERPT:
    His father’s car was there, and Jacob tried to swallow the lump in his throat when he saw it was empty. He rested a hand on the hood for a second; it was lukewarm, as though the car had only been stopped for a while. The roof was down, and Andrew rarely left the convertible open if he expected to be gone for long. Dropping the blanket inside the car, Jacob checked the phone again. The pin that represented him was very close to Nicholas’, but as he looked around, he couldn’t see anyone. It was that steady water drip he could still hear that clued him in.

    Near the beginning of the trail was a water fountain, with one of those old-fashioned hand pumps and a basin at the base. If it dripped…

    Tightening a suddenly sweaty hand over the hilt of his sword, he went over to the fountain. He wanted to run, but forced himself to walk at a steady pace, giving himself time to look around for any sign of life, to listen for suspicious sounds, even smell the air, like the hunter Andrew had tried for so long to deny Jacob was.

    Before he reached the fountain, he had already picked up both his fathers’ scents, along with something else, something like sulfur and rotten eggs. He’d smelled this before, lingering on his fathers’ clothes or Craig’s after they had fought hard. This was what demons smelled like.

    His heart jumped in his chest at the same time he flexed his fingers on the sword. He had been trained to fight demons since the very first time he picked up a foam sword and played with Nicholas but he didn’t know if he was ready to fight one now.

    A gleam, low in front of him, brought his gaze to the ground. He bent down to pick up Nicholas’ phone. His throat had never felt so tight. His eyes searched the ground for ashes and dust, but even if they were there, would he have seen them in such poor light?

    He wanted to call out for his dads, but at the same time he knew it would have been a terrible idea. If there was a demon around—demons—the last thing he wanted was to give away his presence. Besides, he had other means to track them down.

    Turning off Nicholas’ phone, he slipped it into his pocket and took a deep breath in through his nose. Nicholas’ scent, along with Andrew’s and the demon’s, led him straight into the woods.

    He advanced with cautious steps, holding the sword in front of him with both hands, his eyes sweeping around him, attentive to any movement. There was none that he could see, and no sound other than the rustling of leaves above them, or small animals scurrying out of sight. He continued to follow the scents deeper into the woods. Again, he wanted to call out for them, and again he thought better of it. 

    He was afraid—no, he was terrified—but not for himself. He was afraid of how badly his fathers might be hurt. Afraid it had taken him too much time to come to them. He wanted nothing more than to run, find them fast, find them now, but everything he had ever learned told him to go slow, from Nicholas teaching him how to be very quiet when he had been a toddler to Andrew’s slightly surreal but actually helpful lesson about controlling his heartbeat and breathing, a few weeks earlier. Slow and steady, listening to every sound, breathing in through his nose not to lose the scents he was tracking, he crossed through the woods.

    At the end, both their scents and the demon’s led him to a small clearing. A stream passed through, murmuring quietly, the water flowing around the massive body of the demon that laid face up across it.  

    His fathers’ scents were thicker here, now with the prominent smell of blood like a veneer that tinted everything. More than ever, Jacob wanted to call out to them, but he managed to reign in his instincts. If there were more demons, he didn’t want to draw them to him now. He held the sword hilt so tight that his knuckles turned white and approached the demon. Under a row of small spikes in the place of eyebrows, the demon’s eyes were open, staring straight up at the tree canopy above them. It was dead, and Jacob only needed seconds to find the bloody wound on its side that must have killed it. 

    He looked around again, and this time caught sight of a glimmer on the other side of the stream, moonlight reflecting on metal. His heart in his throat, Jacob started circling the thick tree that blocked his view, remaining at some distance so he would see before being seen. 

    He recognized the weapon first: Nicholas’ sword. Two more steps and he could see Nicholas, sitting on the ground with his back to the tree, holding the sword in front of him with both his hands as though defending. Jacob only needed one more second to know what he was defending. Across his lap, the unmoving body could only be—

    “Dad!”

    Ana: Welcome to Beach Bum Reads! I am super excited that you could join me today! 
    Kallysten: Thank you for having me! It’s my pleasure!
    Ana: Can you tell us a little about yourself?
    Kallysten: I’m a French native who moved to the US for love. I’ve been writing since I was a teen, and switched to writing in English after I moved here. I was first published in 2005 by Linden Bay Romance, and have stories with Samhain and Torquere, although at this time I’ve decided to self-publish most of my work. I write mostly vampire romance and erotica, and have several series between which I alternate. My newest release, Demons & Lullabies, is part of the Demons Age series, in which Earth is under siege by beastly demons that come from another dimension through portals.
    Ana: What was the first book that got you into reading?
    Kallysten: I’ve had books in my hands for as long as I can remember, but one series that is vivid in my mind remains the writing of Contesse de Segur, children’s tales that are somewhat famous in France. My grandmother had the entire series in small hardbacks, bound in blue leather with a ribbon for bookmarks and I can still remember the feel of the pages and their smell.

    Ana: What/who inspired you to become a writer?

    Kallysten: I always told myself stories. I’d invent ‘what if’ scenarios about what happened after the end of my favorite cartoons or movies. It wasn’t until I was a teen that it occurred to me that if I wrote these down I could share them with my friends. But if I was going to take the time to write something down, I wanted the characters to be mine… and that’s how I first started.

    Ana: Is there anything you want to say to inspiring writers?

    Kallysten: I don’t know if I can inspire anyone but if I were to try I’d say, don’t censure yourself. Write whatever you feel like writing, and don’t worry about what others will say. There’s always plenty of time for that after the first draft is done!

    Ana: Can you tell us a little bit about Demons & Lullabies?

    Kallysten: Demons & Lullabies is about a family, two parents and a child… nothing more normal, except that the parents are two men, who happen to be vampires, raising a son who has some vampire characteristics. We follow the three of them from the child’s birth to his late teen years, and see the dads’ relationship evolve from Sire and Childe to true, equal partners, while at the same time witnessing the son slowly decide to become a demon fighter like his dads.

    Ana: Who was the hardest character for you to write?

    Kallysten: I can’t say I had trouble writing any of them. I love all three members of this little family, enough so that I gave them two long novels, one short story freebie and another freebie I update monthly and that will probably turn into a novel as well. I just can’t stop writing them!

    Ana: Where did you come up with the idea for Demons & Lullabies?

    Kallysten: The companion book that came before it, Fangs & Lullabies, came from my desire to write about how being a parent might change a vampire. That novel turned out so long I had to cut out a few things, and they were the basis for this book.

    Ana: All book descriptions set aside, they say a picture is a worth a thousand words. What do you think the cover for Demons & Lullabies says? 

    Kallysten: I think – and hope – it tells about Andrew, one of the two dads, and his dedication to the fight against demons, as well as his son Jacob’s desire to emulate him from an early age.

    Ana: Are you currently working on anything? Care to dish?

    Kallysten: Right now, I’m doing the last edits on Bodyguards, the first part of a new series titled the QuickSilver Codex that mixes paranormal and fantasy, with vampires, magic, and an extraordinary world parallel to ours. It’ll come out in November, and I can’t wait to start working on part 2!

    Ana: Okay, last question… and I’ve gotta ask… are you a beach bum? 

    Kallysten: LOL probably not. I like my creature comforts too much for that ;)

    Ana: Thanks for stopping by! It was a pleasure having you here today :)

    Kallysten: The pleasure was all mine, thank you!

    THINK FAST
    Ana: Water or Soda?

    Kallysten: water

    Ana: Coffee or Tea?

    Kallysten: Hot chocolate!

    Ana: Zombies or Vampires?

    Kallysten: Definitely vampires

    Ana: Rap or Rock?

    Kallysten: Rock

    Ana: Day or Night?

    Kallysten: Night

    Ana: Salad or Burger

    Kallysten: Both!

    Kallysten’s most exciting accomplishment to date was to cross a few thousand miles and an ocean to pursue (and catch!) the love of her life. She has been writing for fifteen years, and always enjoyed sharing her stories and listening to the readers' reactions. After playing with science fiction, short stories and poetry, she is now trying her hand, heart and words at paranormal romance novels.
    To see her stories, including free short stories and sample chapters, visit http://original.kallysten.net

    6 comments:

    1. Thank you for having me around and I'm glad you enjoyed the book!

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    2. you're welcome :) Thanks for writing such an awesome book. I read this out of order, so I'm definitely going back to read the first book :)


      Ana♥

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    3. Neyra @DarkestAddictionsOctober 14, 2012 at 6:23 PM

      Nice review Ana.. i didn't know it was about vamps though -.- *sigh* you know my problem.. poop! Ehh, i miiight give it a go sometime though, i want the M/M action xD LOL yeah you heard-- err, read correctly, I'll read it purely for the sex! LOL I'm glad you enjoyed it though, esp cause you wern't crazy about the cover ^_^

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    4. lol it is.. yes I know how you feel about vamps.. but this one is really different. I sometimes forgot that the dads were vamps. Its not your typical vamp book. Which probably made me like it even more. Lmbo! you would! *sigh* go ahead girly! lol. Yeah, not so big a fan of the cover, but I'm glad I read it :)


      Ana♥

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    5. Neyra @DarkestAddictionsOctober 16, 2012 at 4:54 PM

      really? o.O hopefully it is >.< LOL you know i would xD *happy dance* yay!

      ReplyDelete
    6. woot woot *happy dance* yeeeeah lol


      Ana♥

      ReplyDelete

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