So: Winners from last time:

My Lord Scandal: SylviaSybil
The DUFF: Elisa

You know the drill: e-mail me your address at courtney@courtneymilan.com, and congratulations!

Now, on to other matters! As you may well know, Trial by Desire comes out in… ulp! Two and a half weeks. And it occurs to me that some people–some few people in the world–have not yet read Proof by Seduction. And so I have been giving a few copies away–some on Twitter, some on Facebook–and now, I’m going to give them away on my blog.

So. If you don’t have a copy of Proof by Seduction, let me know. I’m giving away at least 5 copies. Maybe more, depending on how I feel and how many people enter and all that jazz. You have all weekend–in fact, until next Tuesday, when I make my Next Big Announcement (which makes it sound bigger than it is, but hey), to enter. Did you somehow miss out on Proof? Or, do you have a friend who needs a copy of Proof? (You do–you know you do!) Just let me know, and I’ll pick at least 5 of you, at random, to win.

Today has been a day filled with work from about 6 AM to…um…it is still continuing now.

There were brief interludes to eat dinner and take the dog for a walk. The dog, incidentally, has hit a milestone in his life: today he caught his first squirrel. I am a little perturbed by this development, and he was utterly delighted. (For the curious: It was a ground squirrel. He nosed it up off the ground, shook it, flung it in the air. We called him off at that point, and–good dog!–he actually came. But he was very, very insistent in wanting to go back to where we found the squirrel, convinced that we’d made him leave behind the newest, best toy ever.)

Despite all that, here I am, to distribute copies of Warrior and to tell you about some books I read over the weekend during the few hours when I was not working, and which, incidentally, I have extra copies of. For you.

First, the winners of Warrior are: Llehn and Cris. Congratulations! Send me your snail mail addresses at courtney@courtneymilan.com.

And now, the books.

• Emma Wildes’ My Lord Scandal. This is a book about a rake and a sheltered virgin. But it is not the book you think–the rake is actually really honorable at heart (even though he is, after all, a rake), and the virgin, while a virgin, is so matter-of-fact and straight-forward and in charge of her life. There is no misunderstanding. There is no kicking and screaming on the part of either of the characters, when they realize that love is descending with nasty, clawed teeth. There is no stupidity. In fact, one of the most delicious things about this book is that it’s a straight-up love story: you really do believe that Alex and Amelia are really, really good together, and that they are going to be deliriously happy together for the rest of their life.

  And yet there is constant tension throughout, with never a dull moment. These are two of the most likable characters I’ve seen–for their forthright honesty, their commitment to each other, and their ability to cope with some really awful situations. I’m not sure I can describe the awesomeness that is this book. It’s sort of like, I’m reading it, and thinking, “Oy, setting up for misunderstanding in three, two, one…Wha? They didn’t! Yes! He didn’t do that! Awesome!”

  Also, this book is incredibly hot. I’m just saying. Loved, loved, loved this book.

• The DUFF by Kody Keplinger. This book is a YA book. It uses words like “asshole” and “fuck,” though. There is Cherry-Coke induced violence. I didn’t count the number of times that the main character has sex (with the same guy). So this isn’t precisely your grandma’s YA. It’s an edgy, raw book–one where the heroine does some things that feel almost dangerously self-destructive. But as the book progresses, we start seeing that her coping mechanisms aren’t as downright awful as you might think. And yeah, Bianca, the heroine of this book, is more than a little bitter. But we see that she has reasons–real reasons to be.

  Wesley is the romantic love interest, and he is not romanticized one bit–not by the book, the story, or Bianca, who is so straight-forward and clear-thinking, that I want to stand up on cheer. There is no “but he loves me so it is okay!” justifications going on here. There is no “I must prove myself to him by some act of painful self-sacrifice!” vibe, either. It’s just about Bianca, figuring out what she deserves, and realizing that she doesn’t have to be the sweetest little piece of docile cherry pie ever to get it.. There are some parts of this book that are laugh out loud funny. There are some parts that are downright brilliantly heart-stopping. There is one scene where I finally, finally start cheering for Wes. Neither Wes nor Bianca have to be perfect–nor do they have to apologize for their imperfections to each other. At the end of the day, I think these two like (and I do use the word “like” advisedly) each other for their imperfections, not in spite of them.

  I’m not sure how to describe this book to readers of adult romance, but just think about it this way: If Victoria Dahl’s heroines were in high school? Yeah. They would be Bianca. And if that doesn’t sell you on it, I’m not sure what will!

  This is one of the best YA books I have read this year, if not the best. Straight-up no-nonsense awesomeness.

So: there’s my last week’s reading in a nutshell. (Actually, there were more books–but these were the three huge standouts.) These books were such huge standouts that I actually went to the bookstore today for the purpose of getting extra copies to give away. Normally, extra copies just sort of magically appear, because I can’t help myself. These…these I went to get on purpose.

Also, as a note: the author world is very small, and quite often I know the authors whose books I’m giving away. This is not to imply that I’m less than honest in my discussions (alike Sarah Rees Brennan, I just don’t do negative reviews–so I keep my mouth shut, generally.) In this case, I’ve never met either Emma Wildes or Kody Keplinger in my life. We’re not friends. We’re not even acquaintances. And I loved both books enough that honestly, I had to buy extra copies and I had to give them away, because I want everyone to read these books. They are just that good.

So. There you are. If you didn’t win Warrior, you can win another book. And both these books are made of utter awesomeness.

When I was growing up, I was absolutely mad for awesome coming-of-age stories. The kind that stayed with me–the ones that I still have not forgotten, even today–are adventure stories. You know the sort. There’s an ordinary girl who lives what is otherwise an ordinary life, up until the point when she is snatched away by (take your pick) a trio of old women/a man in a desert cloak/an apparition from a dream. Thereupon she proceeds to kick ass and save her little brother/her country/the entire world. I’m sure many of you were right there with me, reading those books. Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword comes to mind, as do Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time or Jane Yolen’s Dragon’s Blood. I grew up on those stories. I read them over and over and over and over, until the spines of the books cracked and entire pages fell out, not that it mattered, because I had those pages memorized anyway.

And so if you want to understand why everyone seems to be buzzing about Zoe Archer’s upcoming Blades of the Rose series, it is because the books capture that same sense of magic and discovery in the books I adored as a young adult–except this time around, they’re for adults. They’re not coming of age stories, of course; they’re much deeper, with emotions that resonate with the person that I am now, instead of the thirteen-year-old I once was. But there’s still that same sense of magical discovery inherent in them, that feeling that at any time in my normal life, I might meet someone who will slip me a compass, and the next thing I know, I might be the person who runs off on a voyage of discovery.

So let me tell you about Warrior, which is the first book in the back-to-back-to-back-to-back series filled with awesomeness. It starts when Captain Gabriel Huntley, newly returned from Crimea, happens upon a group of men beating up another man in Southampton, England. Huntley isn’t sure what is going on or why–all he knows is that the odds don’t look good for the loner. And besides, he’s not ready to settle down on English soil, not after all those years of adventure.

So he intervenes, and gets more than he bargained for. Over the course of the fight, he sees things that aren’t possible. And at the end, when the person he has helped has no other choice, he’s given a mission: to deliver a message and a stylized compass to Mongolia.

No, not even inner Mongolia; that would be too easy. Outer Mongolia. And Gabriel, who is deeply restless and unready to simply marry a fine English woman and spend the rest of his life getting fat over pints of beer, decides to go. And that is where the story, so far mostly familiar, begins to weave its threads of adventure.

The magic of this story is that it takes you to the windswept steppes of Outer Mongolia, delivers on that same sense of breathless discovery that I remember and love, while still rendering everything accessible. I thought about this for a long time, trying to decipher what it was that made the story seem so different, and yet so instantly recognizable all at the same time. And what I decided was that while the setting is rare and the world that Zoe Archer builds is unique, there’s a real sense of universality to the story. When Gabriel meets Thalia, she’s used to wearing a native dress called a del–but because Gabriel is English, she dons a regular English costume…to hilarious effect. And most of all, it is her emotions that are achingly familiar.

For instance, when she first encounters him, she’s wearing an ill-fitting, ugly gown. When her father sees her, dressed as an Englishwoman for the first time in years, they have the following exchange:

“You look…”

“Hilarious,” Thalia supplied.

“Well, yes,” her father agreed. “But I was also going to say: lovely.”

And in that instant, it doesn’t matter that Thalia is something of an assistant Blade of the Rose living in Outer Mongolia, that her father knows secrets about magical things called Sources. Instantly, I understand the love and affection between them. Thalia’s the tomboy forced to play at dress-up. Without being told, I know that she’s going to ride fast, fight fiercely, and love with intensity. You know that she will lead you into adventure. It’s that same thread of human emotion that we recognize again and again in Thalia and Gabriel. Even though the book proceeds at breakneck speed across scenery that is larger than life, chasing prophecies, fighting off bands of mercenaries, running from with the villainous Heirs casting magic about that threatens their lives–throughout it all, Thalia and Gabriel remain people who we can identify with.

Near the end of the book, there’s a moment when Gabriel refuses to kiss Thalia. The scenery is new, but I still found myself getting just a little choked up right then.

Ultimately, that’s what makes this book so memorable. It’s not just that the scope of the story is sweeping. At the same time that Warrior takes you past monasteries and through magical outpourings of bright red flowers, it also tiptoes through territory that is both human and accessible. It precisely captures that feeling of magic that I remember so vividly from my childhood reading. And yet at the same time, it makes me feel so comfortable in Outer Mongolia that when the book ends, I’m surprised to lift my head up and discover that I’m still in my house, in the United States. For the space of a book, Zoe Archer makes Outer Mongolia feel as if it is truly my home. And that is dark magic indeed.

In any event, if you can’t tell, I am hugely excited about this book–and the rest of Zoe Archer’s series. I’m going to be giving away two copies of this book to commenters who answer the following question: Where would you like to see a romance set?