I’ve been super busy with the release of Spider’s Bite, but I have man­aged to read a few books here and there. Fin­ished Deep Kiss of Win­ter by Kres­ley Cole and Gena Showal­ter. This book fea­tures almost full-length nov­els from both Cole and Showalter.

Cole’s story is called Untouch­able and is set in her Immor­tals After Dark world that fea­tures vam­pires, Valkyries, and more. In this one, vam­pire Mur­doch Wroth saves half-Valkyrie, half-Icere (think Ice fey) Daniela from assas­sins and finds him­self strangely drawn to her — even though the slight­est touch of his skin on hers brings her unbear­able pain. But Mur­doch and Daniela are deter­mined to find a way to be together no mat­ter what …

I’ve enjoyed all the other books in Cole’s series, and this one was no excep­tion. I like the fact that Mur­doch and Daniela’s rela­tion­ship evolves over the course of sev­eral months, and that it’s not always smooth sail­ing. I also like that Cole ref­er­ences so many other characters/events from the pre­vi­ous books. However, you might won­der what’s going on in places if you haven’t read all the other books in the series.

Showalter’s story is called Tempt Me Eter­nally and is set in her Alien Huntress world. Aleaha Love doesn’t think that she’s an alien, but she can change shape to become any­one that she wants to be, includ­ing Breean, a gold-skinned alien who’s jour­neyed to earth in search of a new home for his peo­ple. Sparks fly when these two meet, espe­cially after Breean cap­tures Aleaha and refuses to let her go …

I have to say that I didn’t like Showalter’s story as much as I did Cole’s. Part of it was the fact that Showalter’s tale is focused on aliens — and I’m just not a big sci-fi fan. Give me fan­tasy sto­ries any day. I also haven’t read any of her other books set in this world, which I think also took away from my enjoy­ment of the story. But if you like sexy aliens, you might want to check this one out.

I’m going split deci­sion on this one. Thumbs up to another solid entry in Cole’s Immor­tals After Dark series. Thumbs down to Showalter’s story (because aliens just aren’t my thing). Over­all, though, you get two sto­ries here in one hard­cover book, and what’s not to like about that?

Up next: Alaskan Rene­gade by Kate Bridges.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.