The Back Porch Reader has flown the coop to soak up some tropic sun.
I’ll be back soon with new book reviews and recommendations. In the meantime, please enjoy this favorite selected from my GoodReads archives.
~Katie

Blurb:

Kismet Andreas lives in fear of the shadows.

For the young tattoo artist, the shadows hold more than darkness. He is certain of his insanity because the dark holds creatures and crawling things only he can see—monsters who hunt out the weak to eat their minds and souls, leaving behind only empty husks and despair.

And if there’s one thing Kismet fears more than being hunted—it’s the madness left in its wake.

The shadowy Veil is Mal’s home. As Pestilence, he is the youngest—and most inexperienced—of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, immortal manifestations resurrected to serve—and cull—mankind. Invisible to all but the dead and insane, the Four exist between the Veil and the mortal world, bound to their nearly eternal fate. Feared by other immortals, the Horsemen live in near solitude but Mal longs to know more than Death, War and Famine.

Mal longs to be… more human. To interact with someone other than lunatics or the deceased.

When Kismet rescues Mal from a shadowy attack, Pestilence is suddenly thrust into a vicious war—where mankind is the prize, and the only one who has faith in Mal is the human the other Horsemen believe is destined to die.

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Ratings are 1 to 5 stars and based mostly on GoodReads standards.
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Review:

This review originally posted on GoodReads July 10, 2015.

Okay Rhys Ford, you get five stars for your ability to put your twisted imagination into words. And for your mad world-building skills. And for your insane ability to come up with the best word combinations to breathe life into your stories.

These are not underhanded compliments questioning this author’s sanity. I truly continue to be amazed by her talent. But one does wonder how one comes up with this kind of stuff……….

I am not a big fan of Urban Fantasy or Paranormal – but….BUT, I have become such a fangirl of this author’s work that I will read anything she writes. She could slap a half-naked guy (or guys) along with her name, of course, on the cover of a phone book and I’d read it.

I had permanent eeeuw face through this book. I hope my face doesn’t stick like this like my mother warned. The imagery of oozing, acidic flesh eating bodily fluids, and snapping bones, and creepy crawly tadpole wraiths…umm…yeah, kinda gross.

Nevertheless, the story was captivating and action packed. Not a romance, but we were warned it wouldn’t be. There were some tender moments and reluctant cuddling so that was good. The wholly omniscient 3rd person POV could be a little confusing at times causing a few paragraph re-reads to keep myself in check (and this was reluctant on my part because of some really gross descriptions I didn’t exactly want to revisit). BUT, a solid story with momentum that definitely kept my wide-eyed, grossed-out attention and left me interested in the next book in the series.

However, Rhys Ford, I’d like to make a humble request that you provide a cheery little short at the end of your creepy books to bring us scaredy cats back to a happy place. Something with unicorns and benevolent fairies frolicking in an enchanted meadow while two hot guys have scorching hot acrobatic sex by a lazy stream under a cloudless sky. Yeah, that would do it.