You are cordially invited to the annual Brains to Books Cyber Convention! Instructions: Book lovers | Authors If you’re a book lover, join us at the Fairgrounds, on Goodreads, for your chance to find new favourite books, contests and freebies! Plus, I’ll be giving away a signed paperback copy of Hero plus some cool swag! To … Read more
For this round of Top Ten Tuesday, I’m breaking my list up into two sections. The first section is for this year’s writing-related goals and the second are my reading-related goals. Writing goals I completed the first draft of my first book, Hero, just after Christmas, so I think it’s only fair if I have … Read more
This year I’m participating in a few memes and the very first one is Top Ten Tuesday at The Broke and the Bookish (which is a great blog title!).
Aptly, the first Top Ten for the year is the Top 10 books I’m going to read this year. In this I’ve sprinkled some of the books I also have listed for the Australian Women Writers Challenge (AWWC) 2013. The AWWC is about raising the profile of female authors in Australia, because always seems as if the men win all the literary prizes.
I just had to read this book; when I saw it on Kobo.com the want drove me crazy. It drove me so crazy that when I discovered my local library didn’t have a copy but one of its sister libraries did, I drove half an hour to pick it up. Like I said, crazy.
What, you may ask, drove me so crazy? Well, I would answer, I have this thing for superheroes… Plus it had a really cool cover (so I’m shallow; sue me). You can see the original art (which is even cooler) here.
Some sort of cross between The Incredibles and X-men, Goldrush is a classic superhero story where a reluctant hero (Sam) must embrace his special powers in order to save the world. I liked Sam’s reasons for not wanting to use his powers/be a superhero, although, until they were explained in full, those reasons were a little wishy washy. I particularly liked how Lochran made these reasons feel real (when he did explain them fully) by putting names and faces to the people who were injured when Sam first used his power.
Pledged, a paranormal-romance for young adults, makes a good first impression. The cover is well designed, the book trailer impressive and the blurb intriguing, however the story, while good, wasn’t great.
Immediately engaging, with excellent descriptions of place, I felt that the story moved too quickly and that too much happened. Seth and Erin, the protagonists, seemed to spend all of their time jumping from one event to another with little or no time for the reader to take a breath and really get to know them. Perhaps, if the plot hadn’t had so many twists and turns, and so many characters, White could have spent more time involving us in Erin and Seth’s plight. As it is, White has us following three romances (one of which is love/lust triangle, making it doubly complicated) and two father–son relationships, which is too much for a single book.
Bloodhound is the second book in the Beka Cooper series by Tamora Pierce. The story follows Beka, now a first-year Dog (aka police officer), as she and her partner Goodwin track down a group of colemongers (aka counterfeiters). Along the way she picks up a scent hound named Achoo, falls in love and saves the day.
What I liked and didn’t like
Bloodhound is written in a journal style. I haven’t read many books in this style but I find it very difficult to believe that someone could recount their day with as much detail as Beka does. Perhaps Pierce should have ditched the journal idea and just made it first person?
Beka is the many times great grandmother of George Cooper, a prominent character from The Song of the Lioness series. Generally these types of books, in which characters from previous novels make cameo appearances, drive me batty, but given that there’s a few hundred years between this book and the Alanna series, there wasn’t much chance of that happening.
Katana is the second book from American author Cole Gibsen. It blends martial arts with the supernatural in a story reminiscent of films such as The House of Flying Daggers and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, except without the teary ending.
The story follows Raleigh, your average teenage skater-chick (not that I’ve ever known any), as she discovers that she’s a reincarnated samurai with supernatural powers.
What I liked and didn’t like
I’m often disappointed with martial arts books and Katana is no exception. I’m not sure what it is I’m looking for in such a novel, but so far I haven’t found it. It may stem from my own involvement with karate, which I’ve been studying for a few years now, or it may be something else entirely.
Demon Girl, an independently published ebook by Penelope Fletcher, is the first in the Rae Wilder series and, if you’re feeling brave, it’s currently available from ManyBooks.net as a free download.
Originally released in 2010 the ebook is currently being re-edited (praise be to the gods of writing). The new edition, with a shinny new cover and re-titled Glamour, is due for release at the end of March 2012.
This review is in response to the 2010 version.
What it’s about
On a post-apocalyptic earth humans live in heavily fortified compounds, protected from the demons that roam outside their walls by the militaristic Sect.
Rae is different, faster, stronger, quicker to heal, but she doesn’t realise how different until, on one of her forbidden runs outside the Wall, she meets a boy. Breandan is just as strange, if not stranger, than she is and he tells her things, things about herself, that could see her exiled, imprisoned or dead.
This is my first attempt at a book review. Let me know how you think I went.
Cinder, the first book in The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, is a retelling of the classic Cinderella story complete with cyborgs, plague and a tantalising hint of the Japanese anime Sailor Moon.
Synopsis
Cinder is a cyborg, an orphan with no memory of her past and a collection of gears and wires were an arm and a leg should be. Her adoptive mother resents her, tolerating her only because of her ability to draw a wage, one of her two sisters hates her and the other, who’s actually nice, becomes fatally ill. All of this leads to Cinder being forcibly volunteered as a test subject for plague research where she uncovers her past and discovers hidden talents.
There’s also a prince with a broken android, a lunatic queen, a ball, a fairy god-scientist and a small prosthetic foot.