I love a wide range of fiction genres. Crime, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Urban fiction and Steampunk are right up there in my favourites. But top of the pops for me over the past few years have been Paranormal Romances. This has been an ever growing and popular genre, and our collections are just chokka full of paranormal goodness. These following Paranormal Romance series are my personal top 5, and are full of amazing world building and characters and plots I have laughed and cried over.
One of the first authors I came across when I started my love affair with Paranormal Romance was MaryJanice Davidson with her Queen Betsy series. MaryJanice is just so hilarious, and takes characters that should probably be pretty darn unlikable and makes you kind of love them. The titular Betsy begins the first book in the series Undead and unwed by losing her job, getting killed, and finding herself a member of the undead. She is also pretty disgruntled about the fact that the vampire community think she is their prophesied Queen; Betsy just wants to buy pretty designer shoes ;)
There is the tall, dark and gorgeous (and rather undead) Eric Sinclair to complicate matters further, as her potential consort to the unwanted throne. As the series progresses we meet werewolves, mermaids, zombies and Betsy's rather hellish younger half sister and so much more. MaryJanice has done several other series that both stand alone and tie into this one, including the Fred the Mermaid series (which starts with Sleeping with the fishes) and The Wyndham Werewolf series (we have Derik's bane). If you like a whole lot of humour with your paranormal romance (and really nice designer shoes), then MaryJanice is the author for you!
Next up on my list is Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse series which the TV series True Blood is based on. I was not initially a fan of the book series, which is entirely down to my stupidity in choosing a random book halfway through and then being completely confused about what was going on. Then I became 100% addicted to the TV series, so I went back to the books to fill my need for Sookie between seasons. When I actually started with the first book Dead until Dark, I totally loved the series (funny that). There are some pretty major differences between the books and the TV series, but I loved them both in their own way (and I way prefered the way the books ended to the way the show ended, ahem). If you don't know, Sookie is a waitress is a small town in Louisiana, with the 'gift' of being able to read minds. Due to the creation of True Blood, a synthetic blood, vampires have come out of the closet as it were. Local vampire Bill is rather attractive to Sookie, as she discovers that vampire minds are closed to her, which to a telepath is like all her Christmases have come at once. Vamps are still finding their new place in the world, and it makes for a fantastic series!
Perhaps my favourite paranormal vamp of them all is Bones from Jeaniene Frost's Night Huntress series. In the first book Halfway to the grave Bones takes main protagonist Catherine Crawfield (known as Cat) and helps to turn her into a completely kick ass vampire killing machine, which is kind of an interesting place to start when he is a vamp himself, and she is a half vamp! Cat is on a mission to take out as many vampires as she can to avenge the attack on her mother, but somehow learns along the way that maybe not all vampires are bad. These guys are just plain HAWT and so are lots of their buddies that we meet along the way (personal favourite: Vlad Tepesh, who just happens to be that most famous vampire of them all - he even gets his own series which starts with Once burned).
I discovered Ilona Andrews and her Kate Daniels series when I took part in an online chat with NZ author Nalini Singh (another fav who features below). When I asked Nalini who some of her favourite authors and series were, this was on her list, and boy can I see why! In the first book Magic bites we meet merc Kate, and she is AMAZING. Easily one of my favourite kick butt heroines out there for sure. Kate's world is in a bit of a mess. Technology went too far and so magic decided to fight back, and now the world is hit by magic waves where tech doesn't work, and all kinds of magical beings exist, which is usually not really a good thing. There are two factions in Kate's city, the Shapeshifters lead by alpha Curran (talk about alpha male at his best), and the People, who operate vampires, which are mindless beings that are controlled by navigators. The world building in this series is fantastic, wouldn't want to live there, but love love love my visits!
Second up by Nalini is the Guild Hunter series, which starts with Angels' blood. I do love this series too, but I always find it interesting chatting to other fans, everyone seems to love one slightly more over the other. To me this is a slightly darker series, set in a world where we are ruled by Archangels. Elena, the main protagonist is a Hunter. Her job is to hunt rogue vampires that have run away from their Angel masters. I do love the totally different take on vampires in this series, and Archangel Raphael is terrifyingly gorgeous! I'm personally hanging out for more about Ilium, I just can't get enough of the Angel also known as Bluebell ;)
For more about these fantastic authors (and nice comprehensive lists of all their series and titles), you can find their websites at:
MaryJanice Davidson
Charlaine Harris
Jeaniene Frost
Ilona Andrews
Nalini Singh
(PS - you may have noticed I managed to sneak an extra series into my top five, MWAHAHAHA!. Sorry, just couldn't choose between Nalini's ;) )
