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There is Nothing Moving the Story Forward.,
This review is from: Scent of Magic (Healer) (Paperback)
Scent of Magic by Maria V Snyder (Book 2)This is the second book in the Healer Trilogy. Avry has to do the same things she did in the last book all over again. I think poor Avry is in a rut. A boring rut. The only difference is that she is doing all of the same stuff without Kerrick. There is no mystery, there is of course no romance -there is betrayal, espionage galore and a ton of people we have trusted and liked that we shouldn't have! Avry is as stubborn and thoughtless in this book as she was in the last one. Actually, she is even more stubborn and thoughtless. I don't mean she is thoughtless to other people. No, she is thoughtless with what happens to herself and after a while it just gets tedious. She spends most of her tome in this book pretending to be a sergeant in Estrid's army and teaching the soldiers how to be soundless while traveling through the forests. I am still annoyed with the characters usage of modern vernacular since the book has a feel of being set in times long ago. Tohon is still as annoyingly egotistical and uttering "my dear" either before or after whatever he says to Avry. I would like to pluck out my eyeballs when I see this repetitive, trite, clichéd group of words. There is no character growth, Avry is not as strong as she could have been, and she is just whiny and overly sarcastic. While this should be a book to transition us to the third and concluding novel, it doesn't manage to do so. What it does do is to bog us down in detail that does nothing to move the story along. | ||||||||||||||
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
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Truly Sweet AND Hot!,
This review is from: Santa Viking (Kindle Edition)
This book gives you two stories for the price of one. Two fun, romantic
and sometimes hilarious novellas that I think will really put you in
the holiday spirit.Bolthor's Bride We have the long awaited story of that Viking Scald Bolthor. Yes, he finally found someone who could listen to his verse without cringing, someone who thought him to be breath stealing handsome...someone with four children and 3 swine-like husbands under her belt, someone who could use his strength and love! This would be a very merry Yule season for Bolthor the Skald and Katherine the Saxon. This was a fairly short novella, but with Sandra Hill's usual humor and depth of characters it will not be a disappointment for her fans. In a "Viking for Christmas" we come back to the 21 century with the story of Erik Thorsson and Jessica Jones. Jessica believes that she has a curse upon her and for all intents and purposes it really DOES look like that. Jessica meets Erik while she is dressed as Santa Claus attempting to 'rob' the Piggly Jiggly of the money they owe her for a broken toy. During the attempted... uhm... robbery, she ends up taking Erik as a sort of hostage and things just escalate from there. The only thing I could possibly have had problems with was that Erik fell in love in a matter of hours, and just kept talking about wild sex and how great he was in bed. However, the story was so sweet in the long run, with an amazing depth of character growth in such a short amount of time that I finally found myself overlooking that issue and falling in love with Erik and Jessica and, oh, did I forget to tell you that there is also houseful of orphans in this story ? I fell in love with them too. It was a magical Christmas for all and this book sure helped me find a little Christmas spirit which I was sorely lacking this year! | ||||||||||
Any Taint of Vice: A Kate Shugak Story (Kate Shugak Novels) by Dana Stabenow (Kindle Edition -Dec 18, 2012) - Kindle eBook
Yes this is a short story with a good excerpt at the end of Ms Stabenow's newest book. But for 99 cents you get an action and mystery packed happy 15 or 20 minutes of reading time.Kate is hired to find her old college President, Victor Boatwright, to find his missing son. She manages to do so but with so many unexpected twists,. murders and turns you may not beleive your eyes. There are some interesting scenes with her friend and fellow PI - Kurt Pletnikof, who has now gone totally straight in an impressive way. This was written with a slightly different style than I am used to reading from Ms Stabenow and I think it is because she has tried to pack so much into so few pages. It is a starkly written story that suits the mood and the characters perfectly
If you are waiting as anxiously as I am for the next book Bad Blood like I am, this will fill in the time for you a little.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Blood of the Pride by Sheryl Nantus (Feb 13, 2012)
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This is the first book in an interesting new series by long time author
Sheryl Nantus. Book 2 “Claws Bared” will
be out on January 21st. Rebecca is a cat shifter, and she is an unusual one at that. She is also a PI, and has just gotten a summons of a severed rabbit foot calling her back home to her Pride. The same Pride that kicked her out so many years ago. Another Pride mate has been murdered and an investigative reporter is spreading evidence around that ‘cat people’ may exist. Now that Rebecca has to investigate this murder for her old, Pride-she decides to go to the source of the photo and she soon finds herself smitten with this sexy journalist. Therefore, they decide to investigate together. This was quite the interesting book in that the author really takes her time in setting up the world so that there will be no questions asked by the readers. I really appreciated the time and effort this took Ms Nantus. It made it much easier for me to lose myself in the story – and really understand everything that was happening. The characters are well written and defined. The use of Toronto as a home base is a slightly different one and is quite interesting for us south of the boarder. The story and mystery isn’t too complicated, but just enough to keep you guessing for a while. There is at least on sort of red herring thrown in to keep you off-kilter. Some may be tempted to classify this as a romance, but romance takes a back seat to all of the investigating and action that fills these pages. In fact, on the one occasion that Rebecca and Bran DO get together, it is not written using explicit language or descriptions. This was a pleasant shift away from so many of these types of books that put so much emphasis on the sex even though they are touted as action/suspense books. Some of these books come off as more erotica with the adventure taking a back seat. Not so with this novel. Yes you do get romance, it just isn’t an ‘in your face’ type of romance. |
Monday, December 10, 2012
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The Escape Diaries by Juliet Rosetti
There are so many books, that after a while I find so many
of them just don’t manage to hold my complete attention…but not so with The
Escape Diaries, a debut novel and whist a debut! I picked it up this morning and didn’t put it
down until I was done. This was an
amazing book. It was funny, mysterious, filled
with action and it even managed to have a bit of romance!
Mazie Maguire has been convicted of murdering her husband;
and it must be true because after all it was filmed on the nanny cam right? Now
she has spent 4 years of a life sentence behind bars and has missed so much of
life. Until one day, a tornado touches
down and Mazie takes a chance. She
manages to escape and I must say she has an action packed escape. It was actually true to life, the reader did
not have to take him or herself out of reality too far to believe what was
happening, Mazie had to go through a lot to continue with her escape. Nothing
was ever easy or convenient for her and I as a reader appreciated that.
One of the best parts of this book is how the town itself
starts backing Mazie and her escape…It become hysterically funny. Add to this her demented Mother-in-Law who
had been baking poisoned cookies and sending them to Mazie in jail and then
manages to nearly electrocute Mazie while she is on the lam.
This is a tightly written novel, with very well fleshed out
characters. Even the secondary and tertiary
characters have been comp;lately written to a believable degree. There is no extraneous annoying inner-dialoguing
to get in the way of the action. The
action is nearly non-stop, but Ms Rosetti is such a good author that she knows
when to give the reader and her characters some time off.
I would love to see this become some sort of trilogy or
series…but since at this point in time Ms Rosetti has no Web-Site, we have no
clue as to what is up on deck for us next.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
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Pre-Teen Novel Perhaps?,
This review is from: Touch of Power (Healer) (Paperback)
Color me confused...is this a novel for pre-teen/teens or a novel for
adults? Because as I read this book I'm finding myself thinking that if
I were some years younger I might have enjoyed this more. There is
nothing to this novel but a simple back and forth of the same plot
device used over and over. The heroine is hiding - the heroine is
caught. The group is chased...the group is caught...over and over. The
heroine heals someone, the heroine almost dies. If the heroine does
what her new friends want her to do she will almost certainly die (not!)
The characters certainly act more like children than the adults they
are supposed to be. There is no emotion to them, no character or
passion, even what are supposed to be exciting bits of this story are
more a cliché than anything else.To add more confusion into this read, we cannot really be sure just what kind of world this is supposed to be. Is it a future world? A past world? One on a galaxy far, far away? Perhaps a parallel world? The world is a simple one with no technology...they have magic. However, some of the ideas, solutions, mechanics and problems are of the 21st century. The language the characters use is 21st century slang which for some readers may just pull you out of the story and make it a very uncomfortable read. It is a fantasy novel filled with modern colloquialisms and sarcasm. The part of the evil Tohon was played ( in my imagination) by a mustache twirling Simone Legre and he never started or ended a sentence without adding "my dear" when he was talking to Avry. He is such a clichéd `bad guy' that I couldn't help laughing at most of the ending. Yes, there are interesting bits, but not enough to make this book worth the time or the price | ||||||||||||||
Saturday, December 1, 2012
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A New Series,
This review is from: Killer Librarian (Mass Market Paperback)
Killer Librarian by Mary Lou Kirwin" first book in a new cozy mystery series" What is described as a `new cozy mystery series' could be described as more of a romance series with murder being the secondary or even a tertiary story line. I was disappointed to find this out after investing my time into this novel. However, I persevered to see where this author was going to take us. One of the places the author took us was to make the heroine Karen a bit of a liar...granted you can easily see why it was done, but it still made me uncomfortable as it seemed to really serve no true purpose except to make Karen look and act a little flighty.. With sometimes trite dialogue and oft-times overly nit-picky descriptions of things, places clothing etc. - I waited to see if there was going to be any sleuthing going on. There was a bit but only in between bouts of Karen touring England, `dating'' her B & B host and shopping for books. If you love books and love hearing thoughts about books - especially Old English authors and descriptions of England, you will enjoy the gist of this story. If, however, you want a little excitement or even just a tiny bit of tension with your murder and cup of tea you may want to pass this one by. With more than 80% of the book finished, you will finally come to a part where Karen and Caldwell start to take things a little more seriously and start investing some time in sleuthing. The method of the murder itself is somewhat interesting, but is one that I have read before. If you do read this book, I hope you manage to stick it out until the ending...someone gets their just desserts and it gave me quite a giggle! I hope that it will do the same for you. | ||||||||||||||||
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