Early review of Marjorie M. Liu's A WILD LIGHT (and contest!)

Obsidian shadows of the flesh…tattoos with hearts, minds, and dreams. By day, they are my armor. By night, they unwind from my body to take on forms of their own—demons of the flesh, turned into flesh.

For too long Maxine Kiss has felt an inexplicable darkness around her—a force she channels into hunting the demons bent on destroying the human race. But when she finds herself covered in blood and crouched beside her grandfather’s dead body with no memory of what happened or of the man she loves, Maxine begins to fear that the darkness has finally consumed her.

With blood on her hands and her sanity in question, Maxine must face the truth about who she really is and embrace the love of the only man who can help her—before she loses what she cares about most: her family.


I had the opportunity to read an advanced copy of A WILD LIGHT, the fifth installment in Marjorie M. Liu's excellent urban fantasy series.

Let me just get right to it: Wow.

This book makes your breath hitch and your heart pound. It makes you take breaks to recover, to take it all in. It makes you ache. Maxine, the boys, Grant—they’re all at their most raw, stripped down to gristle and bone, sheer force of will and strength of heart. Marjorie didn’t flinch when she wrote this story: it's got sharp edges and everyone is tested again and again and again. The results are not always what you expect. But, boy, does this book have heart.

It’s difficult to discuss the events of the story without giving things away, but I can say that A Wild Light answers many of the questions that have been building in the series so far. Maxine’s world is turned upside down yet again and she finds herself in an impossible situation: she must make a choice but it seems that either option will, in its own way, ruin everything she stands for and the only goodness she sees within herself.

The story is written beautifully, from the first chapter to the last. Marjorie's prose is lyrical and haunting, as it always is. The ending (and by this, I mean Maxine’s choice) is brilliant. Clever, gritty, unexpected. I love it so much—it’s so very Maxine and so very right for the story. Also? The final lines of the book made me squish Beatrice (my nook) to my chest*. Just saying.

Fans of the series will love A WILD LIGHT. However, if you haven’t read the series yet, this isn’t the book to start with. These are best read in order, beginning with the novella Hunter Kiss, available both as a standalone e-book and as part of the Wild Thing anthology. For more info on the series, including excerpts, please see the Hunter Kiss section of Marjorie's website.

A WILD LIGHT goes on sale July 27th but you can pre-order it right now, right here! B&N | Amazon | Indiebound

So! Since I got a free copy of this fabulous book and since I heart it so very much, I'm going to pay it forward by giving a copy away to one lucky winner.

Here's what you have to do: Cross-post this review to help advertise the book. You'll get one entry for each legit cross-post, legit being your blog, LJ, Twitter, etc. The point is to get the word out about the book, so please cross-post with that in mind. Please do not post this in inappropriate places like other author's forums and the like. Leave me a comment with a link to your post and you're entered!

Open to anyone, anywhere, as long as you love tough-as-nails women, smallish feisty demons, hot dudes who walk with canes, and Bon Jovi (natch). If you'd prefer an e-book version or an earlier book in the series, that's fine too. Contest ends midnight EST 7/25/10 (so I have time to post the winner on 7/26 and everyone else can run to the store on release day and buy their copy!).