REVIEW: Vulnerable

Amy Lane
Vulnerable (Little Goddess #1)
iUniverse
ISBN-10: 0595337465
Paranormal fiction
February 4, 2005

Corrine Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick, or Cory as she prefers, is a night clerk at a small remote gas station in the Sierra foothills, not far from Sacramento – a place she longs to leave so she can see the world. Her job may not be safe, but it’s an interesting one nonetheless. With regular customers that seem anything but ordinary, she’s almost sure the people entering her store are anything but ordinary. When the mysterious Arturo helps her to “see” one night, Cory’s world will never be the same again. Instead it will become seductive, dangerous and worth fighting for.

Adrian is a one hundred and fifty year old vampire and he’s found his match in a sharp-voiced, tough Goth chick. She doesn’t see the beauty in herself that he does, but Cory is his, he’s sure of it. She’s special and with their new love comes enormous risks; ones both are willing to face if they have each other. They’ll need one another too, and the rest of the fairy hill and vampire kiss that Adrian lives within, to fight off an ancient and supernatural enemy that has set its sights on Adrian and everything he holds dear.

Suddenly the boring, useless foothills become Cory’s best dream and worst nightmare as two worlds collide and battle for supremacy. Arturo may have opened her eyes, but she’s the one keeping them open now and she’ll use everything she has to defend her new friends and way of life.

Build ‘Em Strong

I don’t think I can ever stress enough how important characters and their development are in this day and age, when so many claim it’s all been written already and we’re only reading rehashed plots and ideas. While I don’t necessarily think that’s true, one thing is for certain – characters always have the possibility to raise a familiar story to new heights. And not to say that the storyline here is immediately reminiscent of some other, but the characters, they felt so alive, so well developed I couldn’t imagine them being any more so.

Cory is a familiar girl at first; a loner, tough on the outside, hopes and dreams on the inside. She’s in a dead end life and she’s struggling to get out so she can find her place in the world. And she is utterly unique. Not something she sees or willingly admits to, but when the surrounding area’s supernatural citizens begin appearing to her after one tall Peruvian sidhe unmasks them all, she can’t help but accept that there’s more going on than she once thought.

I loved that no matter how powerful Cory becomes throughout the book, we are still allowed a very vulnerable, open and honest person in her. The book takes place in little over a month, and we see a very young woman taking on some very large, emotional and heavy responsibilities. She handles them with grace, yet not perfection. Despite handling most aspects of supernatural life with aplomb, it’s not as easy as she makes it seem sometimes. This new life can whittle her down to nothing, if she’s not careful.

I found her ability to love Adrian to be one of the most powerful aspects of the book. Together, they are breathtaking. I could reread the book over and over simply for their interactions; such sweet, tender, hard and brutal feelings. And then Green, the leader of the sidhe they live with, who makes himself stand outside their private arrangement, adds a whole other dimension to their love.

But first, Adrian. In a way he reminds me of Spike, the good one when he and Buffy are together – sweet, tender yet also ruthless and capable of such amazing danger. He’s funny, gorgeous and just the kind of male character I love to read about in books. The way he looks into Cory and sees all her potential, it’s no wonder she couldn’t resist his allure.

There is a wounded, a vulnerable side to him as well though, one we see as his enemy draws nearer. Adrian has a past that is both shocking and bittersweet. Sharing it with Cory strengthens their love and enables them to stand stronger against the evil that hunts him and those he loves. I don’t think I could have empathized with him more after his past comes to light.

Green is a high elf and the leader of all the supernatural people under his and Adrian’s care in northern California. He oversees their business and personal interests, maintains a large home for them and protects them from their enemies. He is the embodiment of loyalty, a true knight in shining armor character that I could not help but fall in love with. And he is quite conflicted over this new arrangement between Adrian and Cory. And here is where Green’s vulnerability lies, for he longs for Cory himself. He longs to be a part of what they have together. There are subtle nuances throughout the book that tease and hint at his needs, ones that I felt added an allure all its own to the love blooming between Cory and Adrian. In the much-discussed vein of L.K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books, Green is the third in a very powerful union between him, Adrian and Cory. I only wished we’d had longer and more such scenes with the three of them…it was such a moving and beautiful act when they come together. And that is where this trio’s pairing excels – the emotions and clear love that went into it and comes out. Green very much completes what the book was building up to.

The blockade to their happiness, the villains they deal with weren’t as well developed, but (and even though I love a well-developed villain and feel they deserve as much an effort) I didn’t find myself minding so much, not with everything we get out of Cory, Adrian and Green. What we do see though is very interesting, and the villains deal directly in Adrian’s past. So they’re woven well into the story if not a huge impact till the end of the book.

In Which the Foothills Come Alive

Lane’s worldbuilding is so deftly woven throughout that I could immediately imagine myself in that late-night gas station or the fairy hill home or the darkling – the section of the house for the vampires. The worldbuilding isn’t simply woven throughout; it exudes from everything these characters do. It’s so well enmeshed, from current day to Adrian’s and Green’s ancient past, I felt that much more hooked into the story, almost on a completely different level than any other book. Thanks to Lane’s skill in this area, the Sierra foothills really do become so much more than ordinary, as Cory originally thinks they are.

I’m not a scholar on mythology, but I thoroughly enjoyed the races and breed of supernatural characters that Lane creates and felt as if I was being introduced to a well thought out and incoporated mythology. There are the vampires and sidhe, but within the sidhe themselves are layers upon layers of different kinds. There are were-cats, high elves, pixies, red-caps and so many more. I felt like we got a very good sense of what each of their purposes are too; they’re not simply there because having a bunch of pixies flitting about sounds cool. As a result, all the myriad of different characters we get didn’t ever feel like too much or over the top.

The book is told in three main points of view: Cory’s (1st POV), Adrian’s (1st POV) and Green’s (3rd POV). Very unusual, but I think it worked splendidly for this book because each is just as important as the other to the overall storyline. Too, I think it was the prefect way to learn about and come to know all the different characters, and to grow with them as well. There was moment after moment of dialogue and narration that left me in sighs and tears. One scene, at the beginning, captures beautifully how Cory sees herself and Adrian, and he in turn her:

“What are you doing with me Adrian?” I asked, finally meeting his eyes. I was miserable – I wasn’t smart enough to go to college, or so my parents and my friends and my teachers told me, and here was this man-god, telling me I had the world at my feet. And I just wasn’t worthy enough to take it. “I mean really.” My eyes started to tear, and I had to look away. “You’re gorgeous – I’m sure half the state is lining the block to blow you – and you’re here with me, and I’m too plain to fuck and too ordinary for food!”…

…What he said next didn’t help my guilt any either.

“How do you know the world isn’t wrong, luv?” he asked gently, as though he was asking himself the same thing. “How do you know the only thing keeping you from being extraordinary is the way you see yourself?”

I would have loved to read more chapters from Adrian’s perspective; his we get the least of, but I wouldn’t have wanted to sacrifice anything else we got either, not the ones form Cory’s or Green’s points of view. The three together were some of the best characters I’ve read this year, placing Vulnerable in my list of top books for 2008.

It’s difficult to describe how Lane’s first book, Vulnerable, made me feel at any given moment while reading it. I think it best to say I ran a wide gamut of emotions, chief amongst them a supreme longing for more – much more of this fascinating world she’s created. The author’s imagination is rich and her skills conveyed very well those imaginings to this reader. I was drawn in from the first page and though I was forced to put the book down due to other responsibilities, picking it back up again was always akin to coming home somehow, a sense of belonging with her characters. There is a very magical quality to Vulnerable, magic I quite willingly believed in long after finishing the book.

The Little Goddess series continues with Wounded and Bound, and I for one cannot wait to get my hands on them. Being self-published, these trade-sized books are a bit higher in price, but well worth it. To find out more about them and the author, visit her site and check out the short interview I had with her a few months ago.

Rating: Five Scoops