In one of those fun little parallels that make up my life I’m in the middle of editing the third book in the Portland Hafu series by K. Bird Lincoln and it is awesome. It’s relevant and magical and beautiful and I love it. But this is not about the third book, it’s about the second, because BLACK PEARL DREAMING is out today!
/flail
I got to edit this book, so obviously I’m biased, but I think it’s awesome. Up there? Those are my contributor copies that arrived a little while ago. Aren’t they pretty? You know you want one already and I haven’t even told you about the book yet 😉
When K. Bird Lincoln first submitted this book to World Weaver Press I knew I had to have it. An urban fantasy featuring mythology beyond vampires and werewolves? Yes please! I have nothing against vampires or werewolves, I love them, actually. But I wanted something different. Koi Pierce, a baku who picks up dream fragments when she touches people offered that. Something different. Pair that with kitsuni, a corvid trickster and a dragon? Yeah. I had to have this book.
I wasn’t the only editor with my eye on it either. I won’t go into details but there may have been some back alley dealings required in order for me to secure Dream Eater (and thus the whole series) for myself but it was 1,000% worth it.
Dream Eater delivered and Black Pearl Dreaming builds on that. Each book stands alone (though BPD is complex and it might be tricksy to pick up all the threads without the grounding that DE gives you) but together they combine to make a powerful one-two punch I think most fans of urban fantasy will enjoy.
Best part? Dream Eater is on sale now for you $0.99 so you can check it out for less than the price of a coffee and then, if you like what you’re reading, you don’t need to wait to get book two because it’s out now!
But Rhonda, you say. Could you stop sounding like an infomercial for a damn second and tell us what they are about?
Sure. ‘Course I can.
Koi Pierce dreams other peoples’ dreams. Her whole life she’s avoided other people. Any skin-to-skin contact—a hug from her sister, the hand of a barista at Stumptown coffee—transfers flashes of that person’s most intense dreams. It’s enough to make anyone a hermit.
But Koi’s getting her act together. No matter what, this time she’s going to finish her degree at Portland Community College and get a real life. Of course it’s not going to be that easy. Her father, increasingly disturbed from Alzheimer’s disease, a dream fragment of a dead girl from the casual brush of a creepy PCC professor’s hand, and a mysterious stranger who speaks the same rare Northern Japanese dialect as Koi’s father will force Koi to learn to trust in the help of others, as well as face the truth about herself.
Koi Pierce, a half-baku, visits Japan looking for answers and finds an impossible choice.
With the help of powerful new friends, Koi defeated her dragon enemy in Portland. Now, no longer able to deny her dream-eating powers or the real reason for her father’s mental decline, she flies to Tokyo with her new Kitsune love, Ken, and the trickster Kwaskwi, seeking answers. But secrets from Ken’s past and Kind politics threaten to unravel their newfound trust and someone in Tokyo is desperate to kidnap a Baku. Koi must untangle a long history of pain and deceit in order to save her father, an imprisoned dragon, and herself.
I think you’ll enjoy them and you won’t be alone. Check this out:
“In Black Pearl Dreaming, Koi is a delightfully watchable heroine in way over her head. She struggles to figure out whom to trust, where she can get good coffee, and what exactly she should do about this enormous sleeping dragon, in this fast paced paranormal intrigue set in a vividly detailed contemporary Japan.”
— Tina Connolly, author of Ironskin and Seriously Wicked series.
Oooh or this one:
“I absolutely got sucked in by the way several mythologies were mixed with modern-day and WWII history to form a cool, surprising, and action packed plot. ”
— Pat Esden, author of The Dark Heart and Northern Circle Coven series.
I hope you’ll give the series a shot. And if you do, lemme know what you think 🙂
