Review: Time Untime by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Title: Time Untime
Book #22 in the Dark-Hunter Series
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Genre/s: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance
Rating: 3.5 stars


Kateri Avani grew up listening to her grandmothers tales thinking they were just that, tales.  Never realising that beneath those tales contained a rich and powerful yet sad history, a destiny and a calling.




Pros:
What I really like about this series is that she's managed to weave mythology into a fantasy novel series in a way that we can not only relate (and remember) those characters but give them a personality beyond the black and white information you can read in Non-Fiction works.  This book isn't any different.

You can read any of these books out of order and it's easy to follow the story, history and understand the world.  She is able to maintain the integrity and personality of the characters between one book at the next thankfully not giving away too much of their history which is detailed in their own book.

Despite the confusion, I did enjoy learning about Mayan and some Native American mythology even if some of the names were hard to pronounce.

Cons:
Much like Retribution weaving the Greek and Atlantean pantheons into the series made understanding how they inter-relate a bit confusing and at times a bit of a stretch.

While there are several characters that bleed over from one story to another, the only issue with it is Nick's character.  While Nick has a series of his own, I am concerned that some of the information in this book that you gleam about Nick should be in his series.

This series is a romance and while I understood why each Kateri and Ren were drawn to each other, I did have a hard time believing that they went from their dreams/nightmares about one another to being in love, especially given their respective histories.  Their romance if you can call it that seemed to be a little accelerated for my liking, I just hope that part of the story wasn't edited out.  A better fleshed out romance story instead of what seems like a case of weekend insta-love would have better.

Inspired by Amazon and GoodReads

With the recent news of Amazon taking over GoodReads it has prompted me to get back into using this blog.

I am quite fond of Amazon and love GoodReads but my concern is that Amazon will change GoodReads in ways that make me not like it so much.  Maybe I'm being cynical but I hope that won't be the case.  If anything, Amazon needs to take a clue (I wanted to say page out of GR's books but that would have been a somewhat intended pun) and format their book titles similarly so it will make it easier for those of us who reads series to know instantly whether the book is part of a series and what its sequence is.

So the plan is to write more reviews here as well as keep up with what I'm reading:

Currently Reading:
Time Untime by Sherrilyn Kenyon
To Seduce an Angel by Kate Moore

Books recently picked up from the library:
The Unsung Hero by Suzanne Brockmann
Charmed and Ready by Candace Havens
Masquerade by Melissa De La Cruz

Meatless Meals: Lentil Burgers and an intro

I'm vegetarian which means if you know any vegetarians can mean anything.  I started off being a traditional vegetarian which means no red meat, poultry or seafood but I realised I wasn't getting  a lot of protein as I don't tend to eat things like beans, nuts, seeds, legumes etc in large enough quantities to have a regular stream of protein in my diet.  Now I love tofu but there are only so many ways and so many meals I can have it in back to back before I'm tired of it.  Then I introduced seafood into my diet simply as a way of having more protein-type options, plus, what's an island girl without seafood in her diet.  So technically I'm an ovo (eggs) lacto (dairy) pescetarian (seafood) vegetarian.

I'm all for trying some new vegetarian dishes and some have gone over a LOT better than others and this is one of those that I just had to try.

Giada de Laurentis had a Meatless Monday episode a few weeks ago which showed several meals that one could make however this one caught my eye.  She called this one Lentil Burgers with Lemon-Basil Mayonnaise.  I won't type out the recipe, if you'd like it, please check out the link, I will say that I made a few changes after having read others reviews.

I couldn't find tinned (canned) lentils, so I bought some dried and cooked it instead.  Since the original recipe said it makes eleven 3/4-inch thick slider patties (from 1/3 cup scoops) and it is only me one eating it, I figured I'd just cut down the recipe down by half.

Some people mentioned that it tasted bland so before I added the corn meal I tasted it and added salt, pepper etc and seasoned it to my preference.

Others mentioned that the burger didn't stay together, so after the initial 6 patties (none of my patties made 3/4-inch patties with 1/3 cup scoops) I added more corn meal to the mixture before refrigerating.

I also didn't make the Lemon-Basil Mayonnaise as I don't particularly care for mayonnaise (although I did substitute regular mayo for the vegenaise).

These followed the recipe with respect to the corn meal

These had the extra corn meal added in.

Being fried up.

One other note about this recipe, since mine didn't make 3/4-inch thick patties it didn't need to be cooked 4 mins a side.

Pros:

• Suitable for anyone who is a strict vegetarian or even vegan and for those who have a gluten intolerance.
• Not terribly difficult to make as long as you can find the ingredients/substitutes.

Cons:

• Original recipe does make a bland burger if you just plan on eating it plain.  I'd suggest taste testing before adding the cornmeal
• If you have an issue with texture and crunchiness, the amount of crunchiness the cornmeal adds my put you off.
• For a single person it's a lot of patties. (I wonder how well they'd freeze)

Overall I will say that it is definitely worth trying, I'm glad I made it and will probably add it to my list of veggie recipes to recommend.