WHO I’M READING

The Author. Who doesn’t like to get scared every once and a while and this author doesn't hold back. I began to read this author's books when I was hunting for an African American author in the genre of Horror. Which I presume, foolishly,  was few and far in between. I feel in love with her from the moment I read. The Between and it grew even deeper with The Good House. Frightfully good.

Yes I’m talking about Tananarive Due the winner of the American Book Award,  Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year , twice over and a Los Angeles Times and Essence bestseller as well as a Bram Stoker Award finalist and many more. Her first book in the series of  Immortals kept me up all night reading about African Immortals. She’s a brilliant writer and exceptional story teller and friends with the likes of giants in the field like Stephen King and  the late great Octavia Butler who both wrote remarkable words about her work.

Tananarive Due is a national treasure. Her genius with words  both scary and rich are precious genes that she uses to interlace an imaginary web of narratives for us to enjoy. I hope you will reach for one of her books and see for yourself how amazing wonderful this author is for yourself.  You won't be able to put them down.

The Book.                          

The current book in Tananarive Due’s series of Immortals is the fourth book in the series

My Soul To Take.

The other three books are My Soul To KEEP

The Living Blood

Blood Colony. 

You don’t have to read those books to follow this one, but I hope you do. This book centers around her protagonist.Fana Wolde, now a teenager who is an immortal born with the LIVING BLODD,( read the first book to find where this LIVING BLOOD comes from)  Her fiancé Michel, another BLOOD born immortal are the only two immortals with the telepathic abilities of a God. They have been prophesied to be wed by the Letter of the Witness ( Blood Colony).  With the wedding nine years away Fana finds herself locked in a battle of wills with Michel. These two  proclaim Gods have two totally different views about the dilemma of the overpopulated planet full of humans.

Fana makes a decision that puts their struggle of wills on hold, for now, allowing a deep connection to develop between herself and Michel as the wedding day approaches, but there is something lurking in the back ground as it is always in this series.

This book was long waited for I have to say. I had so many questions about Fana, Michel, Johnny and Caitlin and all the others in the GLOW underground. I’ve come to love them all and found so many of them as compelling and enduring characters. With that said,  I’ve come to love the characters in the first two books more.

Fana, although powerful and charming and a little scary, if not a bit too aloof at times in her determined struggle against her equal Michel to save what she loves is not, for me, the headstrong black woman her mother or aunt were in My Soul to Take/The Living Blood

These two sisters, Jessica and Alex as well as Fana’s grandmother Bea, were for me the epitome of the black woman struggle, strength and courage that I had grown to love so much in this series. Don’t get me wrong, I still love this book and look forward to more from this wonderful author about Fana Wolde the Glow healer. But Jessica  and Dewit (David) were the heart of the series from the start with My Soul to Take. They hooked me by the heartstrings with they’re enduring love. No matter what they faced, even death itself, they faced it with love.

 Alex and Lucas on the other hand had me holding by breath with anxious anticipation through their struggle to survive no matter the odds. Faced to endure danger and pain while finding love in the worst of possible places and situation, is its strength in the Living Blood. That with Bea’s love of family and faith stung throughout added up to a wonderful series for any adult reader like me.

 I know that Fana has to mature in her gifts as well as her struggle to become the woman she will become in Tananarive’s imagination. I also  know that Tananarive is probable writing toward her younger readers, but I hope she doesn’t forget us. Those readers like myself who still have an invested interest in the mature women in her first books.