Nora Roberts and other popcorn books

[rachelmanija]

I keep seeing Nora Roberts/JD Robb's books all over the place. She seems to have written hundreds-- romance, romantic suspense, romantic fantasy (I think), romantic sf (as J. D. Robb).

And I am looking for a new purveyer of fun popcorn page-turners, preferably with female protagonists that kick ass, having burned out on Janet Evanovich and Laurell K. Hamilton in the same week. (Evanovich: Bored a third into Ten Big Ones-- even Ranger's super-secret hideout can't keep my interest when there's nothing interesting in it or happening in it. Hamilton: I hate Jean-Claude. I hate Richard. I hate Hamilton's sex scenes. I hate any man that Anita has sex with. Which means that I enjoyed Obsidian Butterfly, despite the gratuitous child abuse, because I like Edward (who Anita isn't attracted to) and Anita doesn't have sex. But I've been told that every book after that is sex, sex, sex, so forget it.)

The first Sookie Stackhouse book bored me. I already like Barbara Michaels. I have Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking and someone's Dime Store Magic, but haven't read them yet. I read Rachel Caine's books, but they ended up annoying me.

So, who else do you recommend? Would Roberts/Robb suit? If so, which books should I try, as there seem to be hundreds. I randomly bought Key of Valor today at a thrift store, but am not sure I should start there as closer examination reveals that it is the third of a trilogy.

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I don't know about Robb/Roberts, but Dime Store Magic I've read. That one's fun because of the magic-geeking -- you should certainly try it since you have it already -- but the sequel doesn't have that and it bored me stiff. Haven't tried the author's books on other supernatural beings, since I suspect the amount of werewolf- or ghost-magic-geekery to be minimal.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

BITTEN, the first of the Kelley Armstrong's is REALLY GOOD, but it's not popcorn. Literary novel abotu a female werewolf, very well done, very close perspective.

Books 2-5 are popcorn, with all sorts of supernatural cabals and so on. I find them lots of fun (although I'm nervous about book5 because of what she's done to muck around with the cosmology.)

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

How far back in time have you read? Because the Vicki Bliss mysteries by Elizabeth Peters kick ass -- funny and smart and feminist.

Start J.D. Robb with Naked in Death. You will either go out and buy all 20 sequels the next day or you will wonder what I've been sniffing. It's a sheepish love/total hate thing. Me, I'm sheepish.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Oh! You need suricattus's Wren & Sergei books. Bugger. Somebody help me with the title of the first one? Awesome heroine.

[kate_nepveu]

_Staying Dead_. Booklog: http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/2005/04/gilman_laura_an.php

Re: Roberts/Robb: I believe the Key books are one of the squshy New Age ones, which usually suck. Basically Nora Roberts books come in three flavors: standalones originally published in hardcover, usually about a set of friends/relatives, with murders of varying degrees of gratuitousness; trilogies originally published in mmpb, sometimes with dopey New Age stuff; and reprints of category romances. Of the first flavor, I read _Northern Lights_ out of the library recently and that worked pretty well; of the second, I like the fairly-concrete "Born in," "{gerunding} the Dream," and _Sea Swept_ and subsequent series (I read her for characters and relationships, not prophecies or reincarnations or whatnot). The reprints of category romances vary widely so I don't recommend starting there.

The J.D. Robb books are sf by virtue of being set in the future and dealing with technology and such; they're just really bad sf, implausible and often unpleasantly reactionary about tech. I also find the male romantic lead boring. However, I like Eve and a great deal of the supporting cast, and they do move along. I own all of them in paperback, though I may not buy the most recent when it comes out because it was highly sporktastic. I agree that trying the first is the way to go.

[riemannia.livejournal.com]

Roberts' Sea Swept trilogy is not female centered, but is my favorite of hers. Not too much dopey New Age in those ones either.

[cofax7]

For series mysteries, I tend to recommend Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak books. The pov is a little shaky, but the characters are interesting (if bordering on a bit too good at what they do), and the stories are woven very well into the setting, which is rural Alaska. So it's federal land management and national parks and homesteading and Native American politics. Sort of Tony Hillerman crossed with Northern Exposure. Kind of. ::handwaves::

Not brilliantly written, but competent stories, likeable characters, and Stabenow has the courage to do some things later in the series that most series-writers wouldn't, and I think she pulls them off. I like 'em a lot.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Have you read the Thursday Next (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0142001805/qid=1127869445/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-3687102-4966512?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) series by Jaspar Fforde? Fun popcorn novels with kickass heroine and lots of literary meta-jokes. I've only the first one (I believe there's four), but it was very funny, and I've heard good things about the rest of the series.

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

I haven't gotten around to the others, but I really liked the first one. Very quirky!

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Robert's Robb incarnation in a couple of years (I'm not sure where I stopped), but I found the first half-dozen or so to be good fun. Jonquil's got the right of it: you'll know pretty quick if you want to bother or not.

This is baffling. I know I've read suitable books by the dozen, but nothing's coming to mind. I'll have to bookmark this post and come back to see what everyone else says.

Some folks on my friendslist were geeking all over a book by Kim Wilkins called The Autumn Castle a while back. I got a freebie copy at the Nebulas and was all excited, then ran screaming from the prologue and first chapter. But the women who were geeking were smart ones who usually have decent taste, so I'm mentioning it in case you're desperate and/or it gets better past where I stopped. (But. Screaming.)

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

The latest cross between specfic and chicklit that I've enjoyed lately is ENCHANTED, INC.

I'd also recommend McKinley's SUNSHINE, possibly C. E. Murphy's URBAN SHAMAN, and a compendium called BELL, BOOK, and MURDER by Rosemary Edgehill.

Oh, and STEALING THE ELF-KING's ROSES, by Diane Duane.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Have you tried any of Sparkle Hayter's Robin Hudson books?

Fun fluff.

But skip her attempt at a werewolf novel.

Also, what about Donald Westlake's Dortmunder novels?
Or Lawrence Block's BURGLAR series?

[applewoman.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed Kim Harrison's series. There are two more already out now after Dead Witch Walking. Her writing is improving with each book, I think, but it was already pretty good to start with. (Much as I enjoyed the early Laurell K. Hamilton books, she is not the most fab prose stylist. Harrison starts out better.)

I think the Sookie Stackhouse books improve as they go on, but she's fallen prey to the Anita Blake "every man wants the main character" thing, so there's that. But I'm still enjoying them in a popcorn reading type of way.

You know Elizabeth Peters = Barbara Michaels, right?

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Others have already recced the Nora Roberts I found tolerable--the trilogy whose titles all start with BORN IN... and the SEA SWEPT trilogy, if that's the one set on the Maryland coast. Both of those are linked trilogies, marrying off a family.

I've gotten to the point where Roberts' style really annoys me, but it might be because I read too many (my grandmother was a Roberts fan, and gave me a bunch of them over the years).

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Not female-centered, but Wen Spencer's Ukiah Oregon books make fun popcorn don't-have-to-think-nor-turn-my-brain-off reading.

[larryhammer]

They are that. They're also crack. As is her Tinker, despite its annoying flaws.

---L.

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

I like Amanda Quick for pure fluff. She also writes as Jayne Ann Krentz, but that's for her modern day romance, Amanda Quick is her historical romance. She's pretty formula, so I wouldn't buy 20 of her bestsellers, at least all at once. Her recent trilogy (which you can stop after the first one), Slightly Shady, Don't Look Back, and Late for the Wedding. The ones that I liked best from her are Ravished, Seduction, and Mistress. The females are always some feisty, unconventional female who gets tangled up with some Earl and they have to go and solve some sort of mystery. They always end up arguing alot. Slightly Shady is a little different because the hero isn't an Earl or any sort of gentry. The hero and heroine are partners who do private investigations (this is 19th century London), and they end of arguing alot. Not bad.

[larryhammer]

She's pretty formula

Um. Yeah. (I got in trouble for throwing one across the library reading room. Not only was it obvious by page 10 that it was going to be identical to the previous three I'd read, but then two characters started talking about "Miss Austen's" latest novel, Pride and Prejudice, and I snapped at the egregious historical inaccuracy.)

---L.

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I say you have to pace yourself with her. Read one, and then when you've forgotten what it was about, go pick up a different one.

[susansugarspun.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of Nora Roberts, and she's my popcorn-book author of choice, but you have to be careful because she's been writing for years and some of the earlier ones are really crappy. And, because she's so popular, the earlier crappy ones are being reissued in a steady and deceptive stream. I draw the line somewhere around 1990; anything originally published earlier than that is likely to be kind of cardboardy and badly written.

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

Another good series for light reading is Ellis Peters 'Brother Cadfael' books. It's a detective series which takes place in the middle ages and the main character is the monk, Brother Cadfael. He took his oath rather late in life, so he's a pretty worldly monk. There's something like 20 books out there, but the first one is called "A Morbid Taste for Bones". I haven't read them all, nor do I think I even started with the first one, but they're not bad.