TAGGED – I’m It…

I saw this tag by Rae at PowerfulWomenReaders, on The Mid-Year Freakout Book Tag and couldn’t resist…

The Best Book You’ve Read So Far in 2017
Really? I’m supposed to pick JUST ONE out of allll the fabulous reads I’ve had? Fine! But this is a CRUEL question!
After Atlas – Book 2 in the Planetfall series by Emma Newman
Govcorp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos’s entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away; what made his father lose hope; what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas’s departure, it’s got something to do why Casales was found dead in his hotel room—and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation.
I loved the first book, but this one… it blew me away. Carlos is such a strong protagonist and a particular twist in this story had me gripped to the extent that I actually yelled. As for that ending – oh my goodness! No wonder it is a nominee for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Your Favourite Sequel So Far
I have two – and no… I simply CANNOT decide between them.
A Tyranny of Queens – Book 2 of the Manifold Worlds series by Foz Meadows
Saffron Coulter has returned from the fantasy kingdom of Kena. Threatened with a stay in psychiatric care, Saffron has to make a choice: to forget about Kena and fit back into the life she’s outgrown, or pit herself against everything she’s ever known and everyone she loves.
This classy portal fantasy won’t leave me alone, with the strong story and interesting characters.

Emperor of the Fireflies – Book 2 of the Tide Dragons series by Sarah Ash
Kai and Masao, once enemies, are now condemned to the sea by the Tide Dragons Sacrifice. If Hotaru, the new emperor, is unable to summon the Tide Dragons of Ebb and Flood at the Autumn Moon Festival, he will forfeit the right to rule Cipangu. The two Sacrifices face a desperate race against time to free themselves from this ancient curse before Hotaru binds them with forbidden magic to obey his will – forever.
I loved this beautiful fantasy duology with its strong Japanese influence and fascinating range of characters. If you are looking for a quality fantasy with a different twist, then this comes highly recommended.

A New Release That You Haven’t Read But You Really Want To
How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen a lot, and now craves an ordinary life. Always changing his identity to stay alive, Tom has the perfect cover – working as a history teacher at a London comprehensive. Here he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he’d never witnessed them first-hand. He can try and tame the past that is fast catching up with him. The only thing Tom mustn’t do is fall in love.
I love the sound of this one. The good news is that I have a Netgalley arc, so it is one I am going to enjoy reading next month – I love my life…

Most Anticipated Release of the Second Half of the Year
The Stargazer’s Embassy by Eleanor Lerman
The Stargazer’s Embassy explores the frightening phenomenon of alien abduction from a different point of view: in this story, it is the aliens who seem fearful of Julia Glazer, the woman they are desperately trying to make contact with. Violent and despairing after the murder of the one person she loved, a psychiatrist who was studying abductees, Julia continues to rebuff the aliens until her relationships with others who have met “the things,” as she calls them, including a tattoo artist, a strange man who can take photographs with the power of his mind, and an abductee locked up in a mental hospital, force Julia deeper into direct alien contact and a confrontation about what death means to humans and aliens alike.
I love the sound of this one! So, rightly or wrong, I am really, really looking forward to reading it.

Your Biggest Disappointment

I don’t finish books I dislike, so there’s nothing that’s a disappointment in my reading list so far this year. I have a policy that if I don’t complete a book, then I’m not qualified to discuss it.

Your Biggest Surprise
The Forever Court – Book 2 of the Knights of the Borrowed Dark series by Dave Rudden
Life is returning to normal for Denizen Hardwick. Well, the new normal, where he has to battle monsters in quiet Dublin bookshops and constantly struggle to contain the new powers he has been given by Mercy, the daughter of the Endless King. But Denizen may need those powers sooner than he thinks – not only are the Tenebrous stirring again but the Order of the Borrowed Dark face a new threat from much closer to home…
I had thoroughly enjoyed Knights of the Borrowed Dark – a surprisingly gritty and creepy fantasy adventure, but this sequel took the writing to a new, punchy level. Sharp, dryly funny and also full of violence, this one pinged off the page and into my inscape. Marvellous stuff…

 

Favourite New to You or Debut Author
The Winter Tide – Book 1 of the Innsmouth Legacy by Ruthanna Emrys
After attacking Devil’s Reef in 1928, the U.S. Government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them to the desert, far from their ocean, their Deep One ancestors, and their sleeping god Cthulhu. Only Aphra and Caleb Marsh survived the camps, and they emerged without a past or a future. The government that stole Aphra’s life now needs her help. FBI agent Ron Spector believes that Communist spies have stolen dangerous magical secrets from Miskatonic University, secrets that could turn the Cold War hot in an instant, and hasten the end of the human race.
This wonderful thriller set in H.P. Lovecraft’s world is amazingly good – I loved it. Full of atmosphere, Aphra is a wonderful protagonist.

My New Fictional Crush
It has to be poor Fitz from Assassin’s Fate the final book in Robin Hobb’s Fitz and Fool trilogy. Now he has reached a certain age and still grieving for his dead wife, I can admire him safely from afar – I am, after all, a happily married grandmother…

 

 

 

 

New Favourite Character
My favourite character is Dina Demille, who is the protagonist in Ilona Andrews’ charming and occasionally hilarious urban fantasy series who we first meet in Clean Sweep – Book 1 of the Innkeeper Chronicles. She is innkeeper to an enchanted inn, providing rest and refreshment to the magically talented. Dina is feisty and resourceful, but has a constant sadness that wears at her soul – her parents are missing, along with the inn where she grew up.

 

A Book That Made You Cry
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
The monster showed up after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming… This monster is something different, though. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.
Yes… this one made me weep. And that doesn’t happen all that often these days. But the ending was such a heartbreak, yet with also a sliver of hope that poor Conor would finally be free from the terrible dread that had consumed him. As for that monster – it was brilliant…

 

A Book That Made You Happy
A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons – Book 6 of the How To Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell
It’s Hiccup’s birthday, but that’s not going to keep him from getting into trouble. To save his dragon, Toothless, from being banished, Hiccup must sneak into the Meathead Public Library and steal the Viking’s most sacred book. But the Vikings see books as a dangerous influence, and keep them locked up and under heavy guard. To save his friend, Hiccup must brave the Hairy Scary Librarian and his dreadful army of Meathead Warriors and face off against the formidable Driller-Dragons. Will he make it out and live to see his next birthday?
It’s just the loveliest feeling… sharing a funny book with a grandchild and relishing his sniggers and hiccupping splutters of delight at the snarky humour, rude names and broad-humoured illustrations. If I could bottle that feeling, I would save it up for when I’m an old lady and my grandchildren are grown and gone…

Your Favourite Book to Movie Adaptation You’ve Seen This Year
I haven’t.

Favourite Book Post You’ve Published This Year
This has to be my monthly progress report on how I’m doing with my blogging, reading and writing targets for the year, Shoot for the Moon – March Roundup, when I was finally allowed to announce my publishing deal for Netted, my post-apocalyptic science fiction family adventure set in Maine with Kristell Ink Publishing.

The Most Beautiful Book You’ve Bought/Received This Year
Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey
Miranda is a lonely child. For as long as she can remember, she and her father have lived in isolation in the abandoned Moorish palace. There are chickens and goats, and a terrible wailing spirit trapped in a pine tree, but the elusive wild boy who spies on her from the crumbling walls and leaves gifts on their doorstep is the isle’s only other human inhabitant. There are other memories, too: vague, dream-like memories of another time and another place. There are questions that Miranda dare not ask her stern and controlling father, who guards his secrets with zealous care: Who am I? Where did I come from?
The wild boy Caliban is a lonely child, too; an orphan left to fend for himself at an early age, all language lost to him. When Caliban is summoned and bound into captivity by Miranda’s father as part of a grand experiment, he rages against his confinement; and yet he hungers for kindness and love.
This is a beautiful tale – shot through with lovely imagery and tinged with darkness. If you like retellings with some serious heft and respect for the original storyteller, then this comes very highly recommended.

And that’s my responses to the questions – though as I have now read 84 books so far this year, it was something of a struggle to actually choose. In the meantime, if you have looked at the questions and would like to share your reading highs and lows of 2017 to date – please join in.

*NEW RELEASE SPECIAL* Review of KINDLE Ebook A Tyranny of Queens Book 2 of the Manifold Worlds series by Foz Meadows

I loved An Accident of Stars – read my review here – to the extent that it was one of my favourite reads of last year, so was thrilled when I spotted this offering on Netgalley.

Saffron Coulter has returned from the fantasy kingdom of Kena. Threatened with a stay in psychiatric care, Saffron has to make a choice: to forget about Kena and fit back into the life she’s outgrown, or pit herself against everything she’s ever known and everyone she loves. Meanwhile in Kena, Gwen is increasingly troubled by the absence of Leoden, cruel ruler of the kingdom, and his plans for the captive worldwalkers, while Yena, still in Veksh, must confront the deposed Kadeja. What is their endgame? Who can they trust? And what will happen when Leoden returns?

It was a joy to catch up on Saffron and what happens to her after her unexpected return home. For me, she was always the standout character in this enthralling portal fantasy and I really appreciate the opportunity to rebond with her. But my firm advice is to read the first book before picking up this one. Politics in Kena is a complicated, nuanced business and as I plunged once more into this intricate world, it took me a while to pick up the threads and I’m not sure the pacing is quite as sharp as it might be. Granted everyone is thrown into turmoil after the shocking events at the end of An Accident of Stars but it seemed to take a while for the momentum of the story to get going.

However, that isn’t a dealbreaker – the world and the interplay of characters in this sophisticated, clever story makes is a standout read, anyhow. There are some pleasing plot twists I didn’t see coming which worked really well. It is also a joy to read a book where women are fully represented throughout the society – with not a cliché among them. Having grown up in the ‘golden age’ of fantasy and science fiction when women were either in the story to be seduced, saved or as a wrinkled fount of wisdom it still gives me a buzz to see a female cast of characters with agency representing a range of ideas and views from the nicest to the nastiest.

The climax and finale worked brilliantly with all the main characters taken care of – a feat in an epic fantasy where there are a fair spread of folks whose story arcs have cris-crossed through this duology. If you enjoy well written, engrossing epic fantasy, but feel that Life is too short to take on a doorstopper-sized epistle, then do consider this classy, engrossing duology – Meadows is a class act.

While I obtained the arc of A Tyranny of Queens from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.
9/10

Sunday Post – 30th April 2017

This is part of the weekly meme over at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, where book bloggers can share the books and blogs they have written.

Looking back, I feel glad that I was sympathetic and concerned about poor little Oscar’s cold last week, because I went down with the wretched thing like a sack of spanners and have been absolutely flattened. I’ve spent most of the week in bed reading and sleeping, hence the rather ridiculously long list below… And I’m still feeling like a piece of chewed string.

 

This week I have read:

Snared – Book 16 of the Elemental Assassins series by Jennifer Estep
My search for the girl begins on the mean streets of Ashland, but with all the killers and crooks in this city, I’m not holding out much hope that she’s still alive. A series of clues leads me down an increasingly dark, dangerous path, and I realize that the missing girl is really just the first thread in this web of evil. As an assassin, I’m used to facing down the worst of the worst, but nothing prepares me for this new, terrifying enemy—one who strikes from the shadows and is determined to make me the next victim.
I really enjoyed this slice in the ongoing adventure of Gin Blanco’s life as she battles to find a kidnapped girl and uncover more about the shadowy organisation that were responsible for her mother and sister’s death. An engrossing urban fantasy murder mystery.

Dancing with Death – Book 1 of the Nell Drury series by Amy Myers
1925. The fashionable Bright Young Things from London have descended on Wychbourne Court, the Kentish stately home of Lord and Lady Ansley, for an extravagant fancy dress ball followed by a midnight Ghost Hunt – and Chef Nell Drury knows she’s in for a busy weekend. What she doesn’t expect to encounter is sudden, violent death.
A houseful of likely suspects with plenty of above and below stairs motivations and suspicious behaviour… This 1920’s historical cosy mystery was a cracking read and took me away from my bed of pain.

 

Reaper – Book 1 from the End Game series by Janet Edwards
In the year 2519, people on Earth don’t grow old and die any longer, their bodies are frozen and they start a new life in the virtual reality of the Game. Jex is almost eighteen, working twelve hour shifts, and dreaming of when she’ll be legally adult and begin her long-planned idyllic life in Game. When a bomber attacks a Game server complex, one of the virtual worlds of Game crashes, and eleven thousand immortal players die during emergency defrost. Death has struck Game for the first time in centuries, and Jex is questioned as a suspect in the bombing.
I really enjoyed this depiction of a stripped, monochrome world where all the adults have disappeared into virtual reality, while children’s childhood have also gone. Jex, on the cusp of being able to slough her actual body and become her virtual persona, finds herself a suspect for a bombing. This is a murder mystery with a difference – clever, inventive and enjoyable.

Fool’s Gold – Book 8 of the Liberty Lane series by Caro Peacock
September, 1841. A new arrival has taken London society by storm. Lord Byron’s handsome illegitimate son, George, recently arrived from the exotic island of Cephalonia in the company of his guardian, the mysterious Mr Vickery, has been setting female hearts aflutter. But not all the attention George attracts is welcome. Mr Vickery has been receiving disturbing letters from a woman who calls herself Helena, and he hires Liberty Lane to find out who Helena is and what she wants.
Yes… I know there is something of a theme going on here – yet another murder mystery. But they are all quite different – really. And this one features determined and observant Liberty Lane, trying to work out exactly what is the secret behind George and who he is. Another one that took me right away from my thick-headed misery and into another world.

Scavenger Alliance – Book 1 of the Exodus series by Janet Edwards
In the year 2408, a century after the invention of interstellar portals, seven hundred people scavenge a living in abandoned New York. The respectable citizens have either withdrawn to new settlements in the countryside, or joined the great exodus of humanity to new, unpolluted colony worlds, but eighteen-year-old Blaze is one of the undesirables that neither the citizen settlements nor the new colony worlds will accept.
This adventure is set in the same world as Edwards’ best-selling Earthgirl series, but much earlier. A survivor colony is scratching out a living in the ruins of New York, when they are confronted with a small group from another world. I loved this one, having been a solid fan of the Earthgirl books and couldn’t put it down until I got to the dramatic end.

A Tyranny of Queens – Book 2 of the Manifold Worlds series by Foz Meadows
Saffron Coulter has returned from the fantasy kingdom of Kena. Threatened with a stay in psychiatric care, Saffron has to make a choice: to forget about Kena and fit back into the life she’s outgrown, or pit herself against everything she’s ever known and everyone she loves. Meanwhile in Kena, Gwen is increasingly troubled by the absence of Leoden, cruel ruler of the kingdom, and his plans for the captive worldwalkers, while Yena, still in Veksh, must confront the deposed Kadeja. What is their endgame? Who can they trust? And what will happen when Leoden returns?
I was thrilled when I saw this sequel to the fantastic An Accident of Stars – see my review here – which was one of my outstanding reads of last year. It was a real treat to catch up on Saffron after her shock return home. This was another engrossing, vivid world full of adventure and excitement that took me away from my hacking cough and aching limbs.

Cold Welcome – Book 1 of Vatta’s Peace by Elizabeth Moon
Summoned to the home planet of her family’s business empire, space-fleet commander Kylara Vatta is told to expect a hero’s welcome. But instead she is thrown into danger unlike any other she has faced and finds herself isolated, unable to communicate with the outside world, commanding a motley group of unfamiliar troops, and struggling day by day to survive in a deadly environment with sabotaged gear. Only her undeniable talent for command can give her ragtag band a fighting chance.
I loved the Vatta’s War series and was delighted when Himself made me a present of this one for Easter. It is Moon at her tense, thrilling best and I found this particular military sci fi adventure impossible to put down until I got to the dramatic end.

The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman
The Broken Bridge is the tale of Ginny, a sixteen-year-old half-Haitian girl living with her father in a small seaside village in Wales. She’s becoming a brilliant artist, just like her mother, who died when Ginny was a baby. Despite the isolation she sometimes feels, her life is turning out OK. Then her social worker cracks open her files and her world falls apart. Ginny’s father has kept a devastating secret from her all her life. In fact, everything she thought she knew about her family and her identity is a lie. And now, to find out who she really is, Ginny must relive the dark tragedies in her past.
This is a beautiful book – Pullman brilliantly evokes a particular time and place with precise, well-crafted prose that drew me right into the middle of Ginny’s world. This one is all about families – both the best and worst of what they have to offer. Pullman’s perceptive, sympathetic depiction is both engrossing and thought provoking – and a joy to read.

The One by John Marrs
How far would you go to find THE ONE?
One simple mouth swab is all it takes. A quick DNA test to find your perfect partner – the one you’re genetically made for. A decade after scientists discover everyone has a gene they share with just one other person, millions have taken the test, desperate to find true love. Now, five more people meet their Match. But even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking – and deadlier – than others…
This ensemble piece, where we follow the fortunes of an unrelated number of protagonists who are looking for love, gradually builds up into a gripping adventure where all is not as it seems. I loved this one – it is definitely a slow-burn read, but by the end, I was blown away by the twisting plot.

Running on the Cracks by Julia Donaldson
Leo’s running from her past. Finlay’s running into trouble. Together, they stumble into a crazy new world of secrets, lies, and Chinese food. But someone is on Leo’s trail . . . Eccentric, unforgettable characters and genuine, heart-pounding suspense make for a stunning combination as celebrated author Julia Donaldson expands her talents in her first novel for young adults.
This is a great read. You realise just how fragile some people’s lives are when it all goes wrong. Unlike many YA reads, although the protagonists are both youngsters, this one also explores what happens to older people who fall through the cracks. A warm-hearted and thoughtful look at our society.

 

My posts last week:

Sunday Post – 23rd April 2017

Review of Saven Deception – Book 1 of the Saven series by Siobhan Davis

Friday Face-off – Burning my bridges… featuring The Bridge by Janine Ellen Young

NEW RELEASE SPECIAL Review of Snared – Book 16 of Elemental Assassins series by Jennifer Estep

This week, due to being ill, I haven’t been online long enough to be able to compile a list of interesting articles. Thank you for visiting and taking the time and trouble to comment – and may you have a wonderful reading and blogging week.